


Cracks

by WeWalkADifferentPath



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, BAMF Stiles, Blacking Out, Communication, Dissociation, Dreams and Nightmares, Families of Choice, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Fuckbuddies, Gay Panic, Happy Ending, I love there's a tag for that, Language of Flowers, Light BDSM, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Slow Build, Slow Build Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Stiles is a slut for plants, Time Travel, Wolf Derek, and by that I mean no communication, and for Derek, fuckbuddies to lovers?, ish, this is another one where Stiles is like a nature witch sorry not sorry, you get it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-06-25 12:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15640647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeWalkADifferentPath/pseuds/WeWalkADifferentPath
Summary: “Would you want to see your family again?” Stiles asks, one morning when they’re in bed together. “If you knew that it was only temporary? Would you still want to try?”It’s too early, too soon after waking for the words to claw their way into his chest andhurt,but this reaction is a landmark of Derek’s blood and doesn’t need time to rouse. “Stiles…”“I know, I know,” he soothes, and there’s electricity where his fingers skim down Derek’s tensed arms.They don’t do this. “I’m sorry,” Stiles says, “I just- I was thinking.”





	1. Cyclamen

**Author's Note:**

> Hey folks :) Just a note on the tags-- this fic has somewhat heavy elements of PTSD (it takes place 8 years post-canon, with some divergence from the last season). I don't think anything is described too graphically or vividly, but please be careful! Some characters are not acting or thinking in a healthy way. Same with sex acts. I won't be tagging every single thing they do in bed, and it's not graphic so far either, but know that the smut is there and largely BDSM themed. If you need any more info on tags/warnings/triggers, please feel free to message me on [Tumblr.](http://www.wewalkadifferentpath.tumblr.com)
> 
> Secondly, you'll soon see that I'm a giant plant nerd (like Stiles). If you're into the language of flowers you'll spot lots of symbolism. The first chapter is named after the humble Cyclamen flower, which you can see a picture of in the end notes (sorry it's huge for some reason?).
> 
> I'm hoping to stick with a mostly weekly schedule for this. It was originally set to be 10 chapters, but I'm doing some rejigging because they're REALLY long chapters, so *shrugs* 
> 
> Enjoy, and please let me know if you spot anything else I should tag!

Hypervigilance:

 **noun;** an “enhanced state of sensory sensitivity accompanied by an exaggerated intensity of behaviors whose purpose is to detect activity.” Part of the 4th major symptom cluster of PTSD.

Also one of Stiles’s major personality components. In fact, he’s pretty sure that if he were to look up hypervigilance properly in, like, a real paperback dictionary instead of google, he’d find a picture of his face there. Or at least his bat.

Hypervigilance:

the symptom that Derek Hale is most definitely currently worried about re-appearing, as he glares at Stiles with faux-judgey, real-concerned eyebrows. To be fair, Stiles is staring _really_ hard at this flower patch. He can’t blame a man for wondering.

Stiles looks up with what he hopes is a reassuring smile. “The little guy was stuck,” he explains, gesturing at said little guy. “I just pulled him out, it’s fine.”

_I’m fine._

But he won’t say that. It’s one of their rules.

The little butterfly, who apparently has more sense of social context than Derek and Stiles combined, takes the cue to hop off his hand, fluttering its deep purple wings between them for a minute before taking off. Stiles looks after him and waves. “Safe travels, bro.”

Derek watches the butterfly and then watches Stiles, with an expression that’s probably meant to be unreadable but is most definitely fond. Or at least, Stiles would like to think so.

“Bro,” Derek echoes.

He reaches out a hand and Stiles takes it, standing up and brushing off his knees. “Yeah. We bonded. It was a solid couple of minutes to get him out of that little tangle.” The butterfly was stuck in a web of flower stems, wilted as they were with the recent heatstroke. “Those things clump together like wet spaghetti noodles.”

Derek makes a humming noise. “Of course. Well, I’m glad that it’s okay.”

Stiles leans up, pecks him on the lips, because he can. He tsks. “ _He’s_ okay, Derek. He.”

Derek just nods vaguely as they start walking back toward the road, both of them promptly stuffing their hands in their pockets at the same time. It’s hot out, but that doesn’t stop either of them from wearing outerwear, it would seem. Sometimes Stiles hates how much of a cliché he’s become.

“So how was the visit?” Stiles asks, genuinely curious.

The sun is slanting across the sky, painting the field with the aura of early summer dusk. Pretty much a universal aura, really. Hazy, pretty; but in an almost-creepy way, like the air is too still to be natural.

Hypervigilance. Hmm.

“It was okay.” Derek shrugs, shuffling his hands further down into his pockets.

Okay. Apparently not in the mood for questions, then.

That’s rule number 2.

So Stiles decides to do what he does best, and fills up the silence with chatter. He tells Derek about the other butterflies he saw, bright orange ones and pale gray ones that look like moths and maybe were, he’ll have to check, and rosey-coloured ones that were too small to be anything but adorable but which kept their distance. He manages to pause only a few times on the way home, all of the flowers having caught his attention already on the way in. Besides, he knows these trails well by now.

Things change daily, sure, but not enough to throw Stiles off.

By the time they reach the jeep, the sky has turned a bruised-blue colour, and Derek’s contemplativeness has turned to brooding. Great.

“Are you coming over tonight?” Stiles asks. They don’t usually ask outright-- though it isn’t quite a rule-- but it’s different tonight, somehow. Summer dusk is always more forgiving.

Plus, Derek looks vaguely wrecked. He keeps his eyes on the ground, and lifts a sullen shoulder like he can’t decide whether to act nonchalant or have a tantrum. Stiles watches him with some measure of pity as he scrapes his teeth along his bottom lip, considering.

“Right. Okay. I’m gonna make the executive decision then, shall I? We’ll both come back to my place.”

Derek looks up as if startled, but his expression remains impassive. “Okay.”

He has this posture going on, and all at once Stiles realizes that he wants to pretend that he’s coming over for Stiles’s sake. He’ll choose to interpret the cautiousness that he saw earlier, and Stiles’s offer, as something foreboding, just because it makes it easier to say yes if he tells himself that he’s protecting someone. Because god forbid Derek Hale ever seek out comfort for himself. Stiles sighs.

So it’s his trauma, tonight, then. Sure, why not.

He nibbles on his hoodie sleeve, going with the theme as he climbs into the driver’s side. Derek can smell that his emotions are actually fine, but as long as they’re both pretending, no one will mention it.

“Alright, big guy, let’s head back.”

It’s going to take a good hour to coax Derek into being the little spoon, so they might as well start early.

 

\--

 

Stiles wakes up the next morning with a pillow clutched to his chest. The note says “Back next Thursday” and there’s the creepiest, most precisely drawn smiley-face he’s ever seen next to it, in lieu of an apology.

Stiles crumples the note, rolls over, and sleeps for another 2 hours.

 

\--

 

Things started changing in Beacon Hills, sometime between the whole ‘surprise I’m not possessed anymore and my new body was thrown up by a centenarian demon’ thing and the whole ‘yeah Stiles you know I love you but I want a regular life and education so I’m going to university’ thing. He doesn’t quite miss the way things were before—what with all the maiming and murdering and the like—but.

It’s quiet, here, now.

Roscoe lurches as Stiles pulls up, spitting gravel behind her on the driveway. “Jesus, shit,” he mutters, pulling aimlessly at the shift. He’s had too long of a day for this, goddammit.

He manages to steer her fully into the driveway, though he’s cutting it pretty much diagonally. Good thing no one else ever parks there; his only regular visitor is a literal wolf, and much more acquainted with running and windows and disappearing than anything mundane like cars or doorbells.

Or, you know, communication. Emotional sharing. Stupid shit like that.

Stiles closed his eyes. That isn’t fair. It isn’t Derek’s job to talk to him, or to use his front door, or to do anything at all outside of what he already does, what they already agreed upon. Derek left a note-- so what if next Thursday is 9 whole days away?They aren’t _boyfriends_. They’re just… well, whatever.

It’s better this way. Besides, not-being-boyfriends is rule number 3, so, it’s practically official. He should really write a book. How to Date/Not-Date Derek Hale, a Wolfy Expedition into Eyebrows and Hormones. (It would be a guaranteed best seller, if he put Derek’s picture on the front-- preferably shirtless, though there’s no way Derek would ever agree to that. Still. A book). He’ll get right on that.

Yeah, sure.

Right after he submits his report for the city on flood-safe natural infrastructure, repairs whatever tenuous relationship the town has with the high school, finally finishes his back garden, spends some time in the East Woods by Mayfield park, and gets rid of whatever Mrs. Williamson has been complaining about in her backyard (Stiles suspects squirrels, but he also suspects that Mrs. Williamson is the kind of woman that it is infinitely more advantageous to placate). Plus everything else that he has to do.

Today alone was tiring enough. He spent the morning getting paid an admittedly exorbitant amount to coax some life back into Mr. Burton’s tomato plants, and the afternoon knee deep in the most disgusting river he’s ever seen, blindly carving runes into the rocks to keep away any mal-intentioned naiads and coaxing the surrounding plants into agreeing to snitch if any actually do ever decide to show up.

Exhaustion: a common symptom of hypervigilance. Also a common result of an absolutely exhausting life.

The engine sputters as he tries to coax Roscoe into park, swearing again when the wheels make an unnecessarily loud screeching whistle-noise for no clear reason. “Shit.”

The ignition has already been giving him trouble lately. He can’t deal with some kind of braking issue now, or tires issue, or whatever the hell this new thing is. “What now, for fuck’s-“

“Stiles?”

And, oh- oh, no.

That can’t be right.

Stiles freezes. Blood is pulsing behind his ears, and apparently _nowhere else_ , for how cold he is. Quite suddenly. That isn’t normal, is it? Fuck, shit, he has to breathe. Breathing is a thing that he’s heard about.

He raises his head slowly, minutely, just a tip of his chin up so that he can see beyond the hood of the jeep. No one’s there, at least not directly in front of him, not that that’s enough reason for him to relax. He’s been fooled by that before.

But why would—it’s his imagination, of course it is. There’s no reason for _him_ to be here anymore. He’s gone, he’s- that was—

It’s over.

Stiles still grabs the keys out of the ignition with a damagingly hard tug, though.

“Stiles, are you okay, son?” the voice asks, and—

“Jesus motherfucking pissballs,” Stiles swears, and then, a little more meekly, “Sorry, Mr. Brady.”

The aforementioned mailman just stares at Stiles through the window, clearly unamused but also decidedly not surprised. “I left the mail in the slot for you,” he says blankly. Stiles nods.

Then he clears his throat. Breathes, like a normal human. He blinks too, just because he feels like that’s an important thing that people do. “Right. Uh. Sure. I’ll get right on that, thanks.” He doesn’t bother trying to smile, knowing from experience that it won’t work. “Anything, uh, interesting, today? Mail-wise?”

Mr. Brady makes that face, the one that Stiles is pretty sure his dad has taught to everyone in town, for how familiar and biting it is. “Just mail.” He taps the top of the car with one hand. “You have a good day now, hey son?”

He’s gone before Stiles can say it back.

Fuck. Poor Mr. Brady.

He’ll have to write him some kind of apology note, and leave it in the mail slot or something. 

Yeah, he’ll definitely do that.

Later though. He’s tired.

 

\--

 

“Stiles, welcome.”

Deaton is standing outside the clinic, but lingers near the doorway, which is wise.

He’s finally picked up on the fact that Stiles will not be interrupted. Deaton’s paying him to look after this, after all, why should he care how long it takes? It is possible that Deaton’s reverse-psychology-ing him and Stiles is only doing this because Deaton gives him nothing else to do; the thought makes him mildly disgusted with himself. Oh well. He needs the money, and it’s not like there are any other Emissaries in the area clamouring to teach him. 

Either way, it’s part of the routine now. Stiles shows up at his appointment on time (or 5-15 minutes later, who can blame him) and Deaton shows up a mystical while later, when he seems to sense that Stiles is wrapping up.

Which he is. He touches a last few plants on a whim, not wanting to go inside just yet, and lingers on one that seems to call for his attention.

He strokes the petal of the flower orange flower as gently as he can with the pad of his thumb. “Do you feel it too?”

“Feel what?” Deaton asks, in that carefully neutral tone of his.

“The discontent. Something is wrong.” Stiles felt it the whole way that he walked here. And yesterday, on the preserve land. 

Deaton takes a few slow steps into the driveway. Stiles would be more disconcerted about keeping his back to the vet as he creeps closer if he didn’t know that he could kick his ass in a second (some days it’s tempting).

It’s safe here though. Not a rustle or whisper.

“What do you feel, Stiles?” Deaton asks.

Stiles switches to trailing the back of his hand down a large leaf on the same plant, feeling the rough, tacky texture of it. They’re thick and green; it’s a well-cared for plant. “You know what I’m talking about. It’s been like this for months.”

“Like what?”

“Death,” Stiles says quietly. The flower seems to shiver under his touch and he thinks of that old wives tale about _walking on graves._ “It feels like death.”

He drops his hand, bends to leave a fleeting touch on a pinecone at his feet, and straightens and turns to face Deaton with an abruptness that he hopes his startling.

“Where to, yoda?”

 

\--

 

Apparently, where to is inside the clinic.

They head to their little room in the back, which Deaton fashioned out of his office a few years ago when he and Stiles first started this. He was meticulous, carving runes around the room for their and everyone else’s protection, drawing sigils for channeling into the tables, and insulating the walls with mountain ash.

He insists on keeping the room spotlessly clean, because he’s Deaton, but it’s still a bit of a disaster. The small corner office is packed to the brim with books, herbs hanging from the ceilings, informational posters, unidentifiable tools, and of course, potted plants and flowers.

It feels a bit like a second home.

(Even though the plants in here are all as cool and clinical as Deaton is. They don’t talk to him unless it’s for lessons. He’s tried).

“When are you going to teach me something cool, like time travel?” Stiles asks. He’s running out of things to play with and look at; he’ll have to talk to Deaton about buying some new shit. Or at least rearranging some furniture or something.

Deaton smiles tightly. “Never. It would do you well to stay away from stuff like that.”

Okay, _that_ has his attention. “Does that mean that I actually could do it? What about paradoxes? Because—“

“It’s not possible,” Deaton interrupts. “At least, not in the way that we typically conceive of time travel.”

“Oka-ay,” Stiles stretches the word out until it’s annoying, “but that does mean that something is possible, right? Something time-travel-y?”

Because that is cool as fuck.

“Theoretically, yes. But like I said, you’d do well to stay away from it. The amount of magical energy that it would take to even attempt something like that is enormous.” Deaton takes a tool down from one of the shelves, examining it before placing it on the table in front of Stiles. Presumably that’s what they’ll be using today. “It could burn your magic out completely. At the very least, it would probably harm your connection with the earth, maybe even harm the earth itself. And you could be killed. You don’t want that kind of risk.”

Stiles is really tempted to say that yes he does, in fact, want that risk. He’s always been a gambler. And something in him is especially inclined for that kind of danger. 

Besides, time travel? Seriously? No one would pass that up. It would change the world; it’s a wonder that it already hasn’t.

But Stiles also not the type to put anyone that he loves at risk, and that includes his magic. Whatever his connection with the earth, or nature, or plants, or whatever, he feels responsible for it. Protective. So he’ll bury this idea.

For now.

Inclining his head, he goes for a regretful smile. “Alright, alright. But you better be teaching me something at least half as cool today.”

Deaton actually manages to sound a little bit excited. “It is something that I’ve been promising for over a year.”

Stiles rubs his hands together. “Give it to me.”

Deaton grins, and when he pulls his hands out from behind his back (and who knew he was capable of mirth? Honestly) he’s holding two small vials, filled with something brown.

“Soil analysis!” he announces. “We’re going to see what the role of soil is in your journey.”

Dirt.

Sure. Why not.

He’s got nine completely free mornings, after all. 

 

\--

 

It is Thursday when Derek finally re-emerges. 

Stiles is cooking himself dinner in his kitchen. He doesn’t call out a hello; Derek can hear someone’s car down the road, and Stiles notices everything, anyways, so greetings are redundant in this household.

(That made for a few unfortunate pseudo emergencies though, Stiles hearing the window opening upstairs and panicking about an intruder, and Derek hearing Stiles’s heart rate skyrocket and wolfing out to look for an enemy. It was almost funny, a few times, with both of them jumping out of places at each other, Stiles with his bat and Derek with his claws. But neither of them needs a repeat of that.

Now he’s learned to listen for the plants he grows around the house, ones specifically meant for protection and nurturance. He mostly trusts when they’re quiet)

There are no greetings because they don’t need them, but Derek still takes a minute to nod at him after kicking off his muddy shoes in the entryway and Stiles feels his heart rate jump for an entirely unrelated reason.

Derek and wet, _definitely_ a good combination.

“Hey, hot stuff,” Stiles flirts, before he remembers that he’s supposed to be upset. Derek disappeared for _nine_ days. Not that he has a right to be mad, he reminds himself, but he still is, and Derek at least deserves an earful and maybe a lesson on drawing smiley faces so that they don’t look like they should be stealing children down to the sewers.

“Hey,” Derek answers.

His green Henley is rain soaked and plastered to his chest, and Stiles definitely doesn’t notice how it outlines the ridges of his abs as they lead downward. The wet, floppy hair streaking over his forehead acts as a contradiction, making him look younger and more tangible, like Stiles could actually get his hands on him.

And boy does he fucking plan to (nine days is a long fucking time).

“How was your day,” he says more than asks, weighting each word carefully. Derek flicks his eyes up.

“It was fine,” he answers.

Oh fuck, yes. They’re definitely doing this.

Stiles rounds the counter to stand in front of him, dropping whatever it was he was that he’d been holding-- can he remember now? Not a chance. Not when he’s being looked at like _that_ —and crowds a little into Derek’s space. “Just fine?”

Derek shrugs, holding eye contact. “I missed you.”

“You left,” Stiles whispers. He can’t make it angry. Derek’s too close, having slowly inched his way to meet Stiles at kissing distance, and there’s not a single fucking thing that could stop Stiles from closing it and tasting the rainwater on his lips.

The kiss is soft and warm, then Derek pulls back, far too soon.

“I left,” he says. “But I’m back.”

“You better be,” Stiles growls. His own intensity surprises him, but he’s already beyond the point of caring. When they kiss again it’s bruising; he tugs on the hair at Derek’s nape, bringing him closer and holding him firmly in place. He doesn’t plan on letting him go this time. Not without a fight.

Derek groans into the kiss, grinding his crotch forward in an effort to find friction. He’s already half hard. Stiles is too, but still. 

That won’t do for what he has planned.

“Ah,” he scolds. He angles his hips out of Derek’s reach. To make sure he proves his point, he tugs on Derek’s hair a little, forcing him to expose the base of his throat. Derek inhales sharply and his eyes flash yellow.

“We’re doing this my way,” Stiles says.

Derek left, and Derek’s wet and vulnerable and looking at him with imploring eyes and Stiles _needs_ this. He’s not in the business of denying himself what he needs. 

Derek nods. They’re on.

He nips his way down Derek’s damp throat, tasting salt and making noises of affirmation when Derek holds still for him. He can’t leave lasting marks but he can fucking try, and Derek won’t heal himself until they’re done here.

After a few minutes he’s driven himself crazy with the need to feel their mouths together again and he works his way back up, biting into Derek’s lip hard enough to make him whimper. They kiss again and again, wet and sloppy and desperate, and Stiles walks them back until he’s got Derek’s body pressed up against the living room wall.

“Stiles,” Derek pleads. His voice already sounds thin and reedy. He scrambles for purchase, grabbing at Stiles’s belt-loops, but Stiles halts him.

“Your shirt,” he orders. Derek peels it off of himself in one swift motion, leaning back up as soon as it’s off to connect their lips again. There are hands everywhere, mouths everywhere, all of it blending until it’s unclear where either of them end and Stiles allows just enough friction to keep him on the edge of insane. He wants. He wants he wants he wants and Derek _left._

“What are you going to do with me?” Derek asks. He looks so trusting, so innocent. Stiles wants to tarnish him.

He licks his lips, ready to tell Derek exactly what he has in mind, but then something catches his eye. The fading sunlight is poking in at just the right angle through the window for him to see his reflection mirrored in Derek’s eyes. 

Huh. He doesn’t remember his own eyes ever looking quite so blueish. Something’s wrong about that… but even as he thinks it, he dismisses it. It’s just light. It doesn’t matter.

What matters is that he’s got Derek pinned underneath him, pliant and wanting and _his._

“Pretty little thing like you,” he whispers, “I’m gonna take you apart.” 

Then Stiles’s claws come out, and Derek starts to howl. 

And the world goes black.

 

\--

 

“Derek.”

The sound of his name under someone’s breath catches his attention, but Derek resolutely ignores it. He doesn’t recognize the voice off the bat and anyways, no one’s ever actually calling for him.

It’s not like he has friends. 

So Derek goes back to studying the melon that he’s holding. It looks okay. Peter had once tried to teach him a trick for hearing when a melon was off by shaking it; it seems stupid though, since you can just smell when it’s getting funky. Still, since he’s basically alone in the store-- no one to see him looking silly-- Derek gives it a shot, shaking the fruit near his ear and listening intently.

Yeah, Peter’s an idiot.

“Derek, hey!”

He drops the melon.

There’s a hand on his arm and it’s a good thing that Derek’s trained his body not to flinch or attack-- he could snap this human wrist like a twig if he’s not careful. He takes a deep, even breath and wills his body to remain perfectly rigid; in his experience, that’s disconcerting enough for most humans to remove their hand anyways.

But this person doesn’t. “Woah, sorry dude, didn’t mean to startle you,” the guy says, patting him once on the arm before stepping out of his space. He tilts his chin back in a way that seems subconscious for humans but is a conciliatory gesture for were’s. A small sign of submission. It puts Derek at ease a little, even if the guy probably doesn’t know that he’s doing it.

Plus, Derek’s pretty sure that he’s met this guy. Not just because he called him by his first name. He used to hang out with the McCall pack, Stiles would know. Damien? Sammy?

“It’s Danny,” the guy says, with the kind of smile that makes Derek think he knows exactly what Derek was thinking.

That’s unsettling.

Derek stares at him, head tilted down while he tries to listen or smell for anything off. The guy—Danny—stares back, shoulders relaxed and neck still slightly exposed, a gentle smile in place.

Mm. He seems okay enough.

“Hi,” Derek offers.

Danny takes it in stride. “You dropped your melon,” he notes, holding said melon out. When did he pick that up?

Derek takes it, cradling it to his side when he checks that it’s unbroken. “Uh, thanks.”

Danny beams like it was a compliment. He gestures down at Derek with one hand, relaxing against the produce shelves by propping himself with the other. “Funny running into Derek Hale in Beacon Hills’s dinkiest grocery dive.”

The way that he says ‘Derek Hale’ is the way that Derek would say _someone like you._ What kind of someone he’s supposed to be is beyond him, though. He has a reputation in this town but with Danny? How much does this guy even know?

“I have to eat,” he says. It’s the truth. 

That, and he’s a fucking coward. But he doesn’t mention that part.

“True that,” Danny agrees. Then, after an awkward pause, “How are you?”

Derek shrugs. “Things are the same. Not too much criminal activity lately-” if Danny is in the know he’ll read ‘criminal’ as ‘supernatural,’ “- and everyone’s doing okay. Stiles is around too.”

He’s too busy wondering if Danny actually knows Stiles-- and if Stiles got the note that he left and if Stiles didn’t call him because he’s mad that this is the longest that Derek’s ever left for and if Stiles knows that he’s grateful for him and what he’s going to say to Stiles after this-- that it takes him a minute to realize that Danny is looking at him with some measure of amusement. “What?”

“I asked how you were, Derek. Not for a Beacon Hills progress report.” Danny makes a show of glancing around and leaning in conspiratorially. “We all know it’s been a dead zone for a while on that front.” Then he’s back up and out of Derek’s space again with thoughtful alacrity.

Derek blinks at him “I’m fine.” And then, because his mother would kill him if she’d known how behind on his manners he’s gotten, “How are you?”

“I’m good,” Danny answers, conversationally, like Derek does this. Like they’re old friends catching up. “I’ve been busy with this job I just got hired on for, some IT thing. It’s actually in Beacon Hills. You know, I suppose I have Stiles to thank for that career direction. Oh-” he grins, “- and cousin Miguel, of course.”

Derek drops the melon again.

Right. 

“See you around, Derek,” Danny says, and claps him on the back. “And get home safe-- it’s supposed to storm tonight.” 

Derek doesn’t pick up another melon.

 

\--

 

When Stiles comes to, he’s got blood on his hands and he flails, watching the droplets hit the grass as he scrambles backward.

He pulls in a lungful of air. _What the hell was that?_

When he stares at his hands again the blood is already gone. He turns them over, searching for a trace of it, but of course there’s nothing. 

He really should’ve expected that. 

And yeah, he’s surrounded by raspberries, dropped on the grass like a paint splatter. Where Stiles dropped them. In his garden. He’s in his garden. He does a quick few finger counts to be sure, but he’s pretty sure he’s back now. 

Wow, that was one hell of a daydream. Fucking terrifying, thanks brain. 

“It hasn’t been like that in months,” he whispers. The raspberry plant in front of him actually manages to look consoling.

Fuck. He scrubs a hand over his face and then stoops to pick up the berries, dropping them into the bowl that he’d presumably been headed for before he glitched and went offline. “Fuck. Fuck.”

That was so vivid. He was even having thoughts in the daydream, reflections and memories, like he was really there.

Some part of him wants to pick up the phone and make sure that Derek’s okay, because he doesn’t know how it was meant to end after _Stiles’s claws_ came out but he’s pretty sure that it wasn’t happily ever after. But Derek’s still gone. He probably wouldn’t answer his phone. It is Thursday, though, so he’ll be back soon enough if he lives up to the note, which he always has before. Anyways, Stiles is fine. So he had a bit of a freaky, kinky dream thing? There’s definitely been worse things inside his head. 

He has daydreams all the time. The fact that Derek hasn’t starred in any of them up until this point is just a coincidence. 

Seeking something grounding, Stiles dips a pinky into the soil at the base of the raspberry plant. It’s warm and too dry; he just watered them yesterday, but this one is a little bigger than the others and seems to drink a lot. He grabs the watering can and sprinkles a little extra, ignoring how the water looks like blood when it stains the dirt.

Okay. He’s fine. He can do this. He just needs to talk it through, right? So he talks. He talks to the raspberries, voice low as he swipes a hand across leaves and stems, leaving bhind scent and aura and comfort (not that he has much by way of comforting vibes right now, but it still seems to soothe them. 

With how vacant they’ve been lately, touch is the only thing that seems to draw them back.

And maybe Stiles needs it too).

There are a few that don’t like to be touched—including the big one-- and he speaks to them a little extra, making sure they feel acknowledged. He’s got nicknames for a couple and he repeats them like a mantra.

When that’s done he turns to the lavender patch behind him, murmuring nonsense as he starts to weed. 

Eventually, his breathing steadies, and he finds himself slipping into the nice foggy place where he won’t have to think for a while.

 

\--

 

It’s later that afternoon when the rain starts.

Derek pulls up to Stiles’s place, parking the Camaro on the road across the street when he sees that Roscoe (which he only calls Roscoe in his head, because Stiles would never let him live that down) is diagonally taking up the entire driveway. Stiles usually makes sure to park it in the garage before rain storms, so it’s kind of odd, but he doesn’t think much of it. It’s one of the first rains in months. Besides, it’s his jeep to wreck.

The Camaro, on the other hand, he’s not thrilled about having outside in this weather.

Stiles is home. He can smell him, probably clearer than he should, his scent surrounded by the musty-cut-grass-smell of damp earth. He grabs his bag and heads straight for the gate to the backyard, ducking through as quickly as he can. 

He appreciates that it’s for safety, but he’s still not fond of the shivery feeling of having the plants scope him out like that. 

“Stiles? I’m back.”

He spots him crouched on the ground, in the middle of his Corethrogyne patch, poking idly at the leaves as he talks to himself.

“Hey,” Derek calls. He’s grown accustomed to deliberately weighting his footsteps in order to make more noise as he walks and he does that now, being careful still to step around any plants. “I’m back.”

Stiles looks up, with a bit of a delay. His eyes are wide and vaguely unfocused. “Derek?”

“Yeah. How long have you been out here?”

“Only a few hours,” Stiles says, raising his hands, palm out in surrender. But the movement is still a little too slow, not quite sharp enough to ease Derek’s concern. “It’s supposed to rain tonight.”

Derek looks up. “It’s raining now.”

He thinks it should be an obvious statement, but Stiles tilts his head like he has to process the suggestion. “I suppose that it is,” he decides.

“Why don’t you come inside,” Derek offers. “I’ll cook with whatever you have on hand.” He still has to ask about the Camaro, about Stiles moving Roscoe so he can park it in the garage, but it can wait a few more minutes.

 

\--

 

Derek does cook, and it’s peaceful. 

He takes a shower afterward and when he comes back down, steam softened and clean and wearing jeans and a Henley, Stiles is still at the table where he left him. He’s curled up on the kitchen chair with his legs pulled up to his chest, staring intently at his phone. 

Stiles hasn’t showered yet, so he’s sporting his signature day-off look, where it’s clear that he didn’t intend to be out in the garden but still ended up there anyways. There’s dirt on the knees of his flannel pajama bottoms and in a streak across his forehead, and he has fuzzy purple socks stuffed into his shoes, which are also caked in mud. He’s picking at his lip as he reads.

It’s Derek’s favourite Stiles-look, because it’s when he looks the most like himself.

It hits him, suddenly, how much he’s missed this over the last nine days. And how lucky he is, that Stiles doesn’t even ask.

“What’re you looking at?”

Stiles glances up, pleased. He turns his phone around. “I’m reading about you.”

Derek almost doesn’t want to look-- he knows better, _he knows better_ \-- but he does it anyway.

“Cryptids of The World,” Stiles quotes, with a shit-eating grin. The title is spelled out across his phone in LARGE FONT meant to ATTRACT VIEWERS. It’s a clickbait article, and there are pictures underneath of some kind of bigfoot-like creature caught in the act of doing whatever bigfoot presumably does. Would do.

He doesn’t actually know if bigfoot is real, honestly.

“I know, I know, ‘stalkers of the world’ would probably be closer to the truth, but I figured you could pull off cryptid with some effort.”

Derek rolls his eyes, grabbing a cloth for the counter and pouring himself a glass of water. “I was never a stalker.”

“Oh really, Derek? Really? My bedroom window, my closet door, and Danny’s lifetime of masturbation-material would suggest otherwise.”

Oh, yeah. Suddenly Danny’s hand on his arm seems suspect. He wrinkles his nose. “Gross.”

Stiles shrugs, like his friend’s masturbation habits are inconsequential. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t masturbate to yourself if you could. Wait,” he adds, suddenly invested, “do you? Masturbate to yourself?”

“No?”

“I just figured, looking like you, anyone else is a pretty big let-down. What _do_ you masturbate to?”

Derek chokes on the water.

“Oh come on. We have sex, like, together. You can tell me these things. Is it Braeden? I bet you still masturbate to Braeden.”

“Stop saying masturbate.” But Stiles has a dreamy look on his face that’s far too specific for Derek’s liking, so he can’t help but shoot back, “Do you masturbate to Braeden?” 

Derek, for his part, actually doesn’t. He still talks to her on the phone occasionally, but he doesn’t think of her that way anymore. They were amazing when they were together but they were never meant to be. And it’s been years.

“Ohhh, Jennifer? Or is that still too soon?”

Derek clenches his jaw, hoping his non-verbals will work for once in their entire time knowing each other. Stiles hasn’t actually answered his question about Braeden, either, which doesn’t help matters.

Besides, Stiles won’t find the answer he’s looking for. Derek doesn’t really… 

“I don’t—“ 

Fuck.

Stiles blinks at him. “You don’t…?” His eyes widen as he takes in Derek’s flushed face. “Wait. Seriously? No way. Do you not-- you don’t masturbate? _Ever?_ ”

Derek shrugs. “I’ve never really needed to.”

That gets the reaction he was hoping for. Stiles splutters, indignant, and tosses a second tea-towel in his general direction. Derek grabs it out of midair which just makes Stiles throw his hands up. “Of course not,” he mutters. “If I were a literal sculpted god of the Grumpy Eyebrow Realm I could probably get sex whenever I wanted, too.”

Derek grins. “Who says you can’t now?”

It’s unfairly gratifying, the way that Stiles looks shocked still every time he talks about them sleeping together. His mouth drops open a little and hangs there, and it’s like Derek can actually see the moment when all of the blood rushes right down to his crouch.

“Okay, wow. That was so fucking sexy, seriously. Can we talk more about how you’re a GQ model who wants to sleep with me?”

Derek busies himself with turning the oven on. “Your self-esteem is far too connected to your sex drive.”

Stiles laughs shamelessly. “Yours would be too, if you spent your high school years as the funny looking spaz sidekick to Scott-friggen-puppy-dog eyes Mcall.”

Derek turns around in time to see Stiles’s briefly delighted face at his own unexpected pun. It almost feels wrong to shoot daggers at him, when he looks that innocently happy. But Derek takes one for the team.

“You weren’t funny-looking.”

He wasn’t, not really. Stiles was an awkward, gangly teenager when Derek first met him, but he quickly grew into himself, both emotionally and physically. Of course with their age difference Derek had never really looked at him that way back then, but by the time he graduated high school, Stiles could almost have been called conventionally attractive.

Now Stiles has the grace and surety of a born wolf. He’s lived in his mind and body through every possible scenario-- god knows he’s hit rock bottom often enough-- and he’s still managed to make an ally out of himself. 

It’s attractive.

Stiles clutches his chest. “You say the sweetest things.”

“I’m gonna make banana bread.”

“Okay, I can roll with that as dirty-talk too. Your banana bread is really fucking good. Maybe you should--”

“Are you in?”

Stiles untangles his legs, drops his phone on the counter, and stands in one fluid movement. “Hell yeah.”

So they bake.

 

\--

 

When they’re done, the kitchen is still spotless, but Derek can feel the mess of it imprinted on him like a bruise. There’s not much on his body or in his life that stays permanent. This won’t be either, but he’ll take the warm feeling, for as long as he can get it.

 

\--

 

The rain doesn’t stop.

It doesn’t stop for weeks, and weeks, and Stiles is damp and miserable and _done._

Typically he likes the rain. Typically he loves the rain. It’s good for the plants, it keeps the sun from burning his fair skin-- yes fair, not pale, give him that-- and it makes everything smell nice .

(It’s also harder for supernatural creatures to sniff things out in the rain, but he doesn’t care about that, obviously, since there hasn’t been a real supernatural concern in years and he is very well adjusted to reality thank you).

But it’s been raining for _weeks._

Which means that it’s still raining the night that Stiles wakes up on the floor.

Well, that’s not technically true. He actually wakes up mid-air, tumbling his way heart-stoppingly to the floor. But it’s more the hitting-the-floor part that stands out in the end. And Derek leaping out of the other side of the bed, like a startled deer.

Deer. Wolf. Whatever.

“What’s wrong?” Stiles asks, not overly concerned—except maybe for _his back,_ they need carpets seriously yikes-- but still sympathetic. Derek has a lot of nightmares; usually he hides them from Stiles pretty well (it’s in the rulebook) but sometimes he can’t, and Stiles wakes up to him wolfed out and snarling or shaking and pretending that he’s not crying.

Those nights are interesting.

Something niggles in Stiles’s mind, though, as he asks. This doesn’t feel the same as those nights. Not just because he’s on the floor and because Derek doesn’t seem to be frantically apologizing or growling at him (Stiles is pretty sure those are his only two post-nightmare settings). There’s something else.

He’s not concerned yet, but it feels like maybe he should be.

“It’s—I don’t—“ Derek says, searching the floor for his clothes. “It’s—I don’t know why I’m feeling him but I am and—“

“Derek,” Stiles says. “Breathe. Feeling who?”

_He’s dead. He’s dead he’s dead he’s dead._

But it’s not clear who the ‘he’ could be. Derek feels pack, and none of them are here (Stiles notes, objectively, without bitterness). But _he’s_ dead. He’s _dead._ Like—

"It’s Isaac,” Derek says, and everything stops.

“Wait, what?”

“I don’t know.” Derek scratches at his collarbone until he hits blood, then uses the hand to button his cargo shorts instead. “I don’t know, but I feel Isaac, and Stiles—it’s bad.”

Shit. Fuckedy fuck shit balls. “Bad how?” he asks, and there are already visions of _blood gore ripped dead falling-- fuck_ running through his head. Breathing, he’s breathing. “Is he hurt?”

Derek pauses at the door, as if he hadn’t actually considered that factor in his mad chase to get to the beta. He tilts his head. “I don’t—“ he inhales deeply, searching for the words. “It feels like it’s past tense. Like he was hurt before, and now he’s—“ Derek lets out a series of colourful swears to rival the ones that Stiles is using in his mind and flings the door open, letting deep moonlight into the loft. It backlights him for a moment, like they’re in some kind of superhero movie where deep, poignant music would be playing in the background, and Stiles loses his breath for a few seconds too long.

He needs to focus. “Is it about… his dad?” he chances, pulling on his own pants. He flips on the first shirt that he comes across, not caring whose it is or if it’s inside out. Derek eyes him warily.

Stiles just snorts. As if there was any doubt that he’d come.

Instead of a verbal response, Derek clenches his fists, digging his claws into calloused skin that heals instantly but still has to hurt like a bitch.

That’s answer enough for Stiles. “We can take the Camero-- you drive.”

 

\--

 

“Do you feel him?” Stiles asks, as they swing around yet another painfully terrifying curve. “Is he—“

“He’s alive,’ Derek says. It should be depressing, how mechanical he sounds, sounding out the word _alive._ “I can feel that much.”

Stiles nods. The rain is still coming down hard, and it’s the type of dark that only happens at 3am on rural roads, full moon or not, so Derek needs to concentrate.

Concentrate.

“Hey Derek, where were you?”

Derek turns toward him minutely, eyebrow quirked.

“Your note didn’t say,” Stiles explains.

Stiles has never asked this before.

He wouldn’t be surprised if Derek snaps at him, the way that he looks like he’s about to. This is a totally, 1000% inappropriate time to be bringing it up. He’s not supposed to bring it up at all, but doing so now is spectacularly selfish, and he knows it. But he’s frazzled and things are blurring and they might just die on the road anyways, with how Derek is driving. Besides, he hardly slept for the past nine nights, no matter how many times he reminded himself that he used to sleep in an empty bed. So he’s tired.

It’s not Derek’s fault or responsibility but he just needs—he thinks that knowing might help.

Derek must sense his desperation, because he concedes. 

“I was looking for something.”

Right.

“Aren’t we all,” Stiles quips. He pointedly ignores how true that actually is.

For Derek, it’s a start. He won’t push. 

Well, he’ll push later, at least. (He won’t, he knows he won’t-- he’s too accustomed to the Not Asking by now-- but he can tell himself that he will). 

Derek opens his mouth to respond, and the overwhelming unlikelihood of him voluntarily proffering information almost makes Stiles’s heart stop again but instead, he misses out on whatever it was that Derek would have said. Because right at that moment, the world rings out with a terrifying, ear-splitting howl.

It’s Isaac.

 

\--

 

What they eventually pull up to, after another harrowing 15 minutes, is less of a loft and more of a dilapidated heap of wood and concrete. Vines have reclaimed it, and the walls and ceiling look like something out of a building-code hazards manual. It’s awful, basically.

It’s also deeply, unsettling familiar.

“Wasn’t this your old house?”

Derek’s stony silence fills the space between them with more than a few answers.

They get out of the car rather gracelessly, having to squelch directly into the mud. Stiles picks around the puddles out of habit but he doesn’t care, not really. Mud comes out with water; most things do.

Something occurs to him as Derek rounds the car. He stops. “Derek.”

“It’s possible.”

“Do you think that- wait- what’s possible?”

Derek is wearing his leather jacket again and his profile is a blurry, deep brown silhouette, but it’s clear that he’s already wolfed out. The whites of his fangs catch the moonlight and glint and _oh,_ Stiles thinks, wolf fits just fine. The “were” part seems to just water it down, what this really is.

“That it’s a trap,” Derek answers. His voice is a little muffled (which really shouldn’t be cute-- _it’s not the time for cute, Stiles_ ). “It’s possible, but unlikely. I smell Isaac. I-I feel him. We’re not pack anymore, not the way that we used to be, but those bonds don’t just break. It’s him, Stiles, it has to be.”

That’s more words than Stiles thinks he’s ever heard Derek say at once. He doesn’t bother to ask how he knew what Stiles was going to say, or if he sensed a trap too, or if Stiles should really be more worried about all of this. They have bigger fish to fry.

“Okay,” Stiles says. “You know what they say then, right?”

Derek makes a face like Stiles’s stupidity is inevitable, which, true, but also, unfair.

“Age before beauty.” Stiles gestures with his hands out, indicating that Derek go first. Derek’s eyes roll so hard they basically go white, and his jaw sets, but he goes ahead.

“Good thing that I have both.”

The whimpering grows louder the closer they get. _He’s dead._ But, Isaac is in France. Stiles is pretty sure that the careful boundaries of his currently mapped out reality mean very little anymore.

It’s that feeling that hurts more than anything. Because it shouldn’t feel like that already. How easily Stiles falls into doubt. It’s a little pathetic.

Besides, the area around the old warehouse is covered with green, brought forward by the rainfall and blooming. It grounds Stiles, anchoring him. This is his compass. He wills the world to be gentle with Isaac, and he can sense the space responding-- not visibly but on some other level, like he’s exchanging pheromone signals or something. 

At least, that’s what he’d like to believe.

Derek snaps the door open with an echoing crack and they clamour in, no point in being subtle. If it’s a trap, then they’re in it (fire away bad guys).

But what they see when they open the door isn’t anything threatening. It’s mostly just more of the same, mud and rot, and the moon through the holes in the ceiling. It’s gross, sure, and definitely déjà vu, but that’s not the important part.

Because there’s Isaac. Isaac, who’s 4 years older than Stiles’s mental image and is thoroughly fetally-positioned in a heap on the floor, rocking from where he’s crouched like he’s trying to stim or just shake out his brain so much that everything stops.

He’s muttering to himself, and Stiles’s first thought is _I thought that we left that godforsaken motel behind._

They don’t need a repeat of that.

“Fuck, Isaac.”

The whole scene—the beta lying there on the damp floor, years and years after getting out of Beacon Hills, miserable and still and radiating sadness that even Stiles can feel—is just too fucking depressing. This wasn’t supposed to be how things went down. Isaac was out.

Derek clearly feels the same way. “What happened to you?” he asks, and it’s soft but he still sounds angry and-- Isaac flinches. Derek flinches just as hard in response and fuck, this is all so messed up.

Derek quiets his voice, tries to look small; he’s learning. “Isaac? Why are you back?”

“Isaac? Are you hurt?”

They’re both using his name, Isaac Isaac Isaac, because there’s still the heavy feeling in the air of _trap._ It’s pretty clear now that it’s not, though, or at least all signs would point that way. Maybe it would be easier if it were one.

They walk across the concrete floors, crisscrossed with old rotting planks like pick-up-sticks. Stiles stumbles on one and Derek throws an arm out, steadying his chest in a way that’s far too reminiscent of soccer-moms to be sexy but is definitely sweet. Or at least would be, if romance was even on the radar right now.

Isaac still hasn’t answered.

Some of the windows have been shattered, and sharp glass fragments are glistening from within the broken frames and on the floor surrounding them. Stiles’s first thought is for danger—Isaac was attacked, they could still be here, Stiles didn’t bring a weapon, he should’ve brought a weapon—but some reluctant part of him knows that that isn’t what this is.

Maybe it’s in the way that Isaac’s barely looked at them. Or the way that he seems to be shrinking inward the closer that they get. The closer that Derek gets.

All at once Stiles knows why Isaac hasn’t said anything. “It’s you.”

Derek doesn’t understand what he’s trying to say. He’s still creeping closer, oblivious, now within a few meters of the huddled form on the ground. There’s a sharpness in the air that even Stiles can pick up on, like electricity, and it’s making the Alpha wary, just not of the right thing.

“Derek, it’s you,” Stiles repeats, as Isaac lets out another keening noise and shuffles himself even further backward into the wall like he can mold himself to it. He’s in full beta shift, eyes glowing gold and teeth and ears pointed. It’s been a surprisingly long time since Stiles has seen a wolf like that and now, penned in by two, he hates how familiar this feels.

“What’s me?” Derek asks around his teeth. His eyes are still drilling into Isaac. It would be some pretty intense eye contact, if the beta wasn’t looking anywhere _but_ at Derek.

“You’ve hurt him too much,” Stiles says.

He wants to add on ‘I’m sorry,’ because he is, but that feels too patronizing, so he says simply, “you have to go.”

Now Derek pulls his eyes away as his head swivels up, and he lets out a low growl that seems to be ripped from his chest. It echoes around the building in an uncomfortable, rumbly loop. “You think that I’m leaving him?”

Stiles flattens his lips. He gestures to where Isaac has now started rocking again as a response to the growl, ears flattened like that day at the station when Derek had to pull rank. It’s submission, but it’s coerced and Isaac is terrified, so it’s worthless. “Yeah, I do,” he says.

Derek clenches his jaw. “You think that I’m leaving you.” It’s not a question, even though it’s meant to be.

“I think that you have to.”

After another terse few seconds, Derek nods, long and slow as he releases a breath. “Fine,” he says, “but I’ll be right outside. If anything happens—“

“You’ll hear it. I’ll be fine, Derek. I’ll take care of him. I will.”

So Derek leaves. He’s faster than when they came in without Stiles’s unbalanced humanity slowing him down over the rotting floor, and Derek makes the exit in 3 quick leaps.

“A little breathing room would be nice,” Stiles says a moment later, at the same volume. It’s clear that Derek’s parked himself just outside the door. Then, “thank you.”

Taking a quick breath, Stiles refocuses his attention on the scared teenager in front of him. No, not teenager, _young man,_ holy hell that’s bizarre, and he needs to stop forgetting that he’s still existing in this current plane of time because that could be very not good.

Isaac doesn’t look any better with Derek having left, but Stiles knows that it was the right choice. Isaac has always had triggers and he’s prone to flashbacks; if he’s feeling vulnerable for some reason, then he’s likely to perceive someone who’s previously been a threat as dangerous. 

(Stiles resolutely ignores the part of his brain that whispers _you hurt him too,_ because it’s clear that Isaac doesn’t see it that way, and logic has to win here).

It’s why Scott used to be the only one who was able to talk him down. Stiles never tried, but now he’s sort of wishing he made more of an effort back then to not-hate Isaac and his stupid scarves, because it would definitely come in handy now.

Ah, well.

“Isaac,” he whispers, confident that it’ll carry. Derek will be listening in, too, despite his respectful retreat. “Isaac, do you know where you are?”

When the only answer he gets is a fierce tug of hair that probably rips more than a few strands out, Stiles switches tactics. If Isaac’s not ready for words then he doesn’t have to be.

He takes a couple of cautious steps closer to where Derek had been before and seeks out a spot, deliberately looking away from Isaac to check the floor. When he finds a patch of ground that’s not entirely marred by moss and splinters, Stiles plops himself down gently.

ADHD may pose an issue to this plan. He opts to pull out his phone; he doesn’t have wifi here anymore but hey, he’s been meaning to go through his old photos anyways.

“You’re safe, we’re all safe,” Stiles mumbles. To Isaac, to Derek, or to himself, he isn’t sure. Possibly all three. “We’re all safe.”

Then he waits.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cyclamen, as promised:  
> 


	2. Celandine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey look at that, early chapter. I decided to break up my ridiculously long chapters because I need to start getting this out there, so hopefully this format works for y'all. 
> 
> no particular trigger warnings for this chapter outside of what's warned in the tags- some discussion and experiencing of PTSD symptoms, triggers, paranoia, etc. Next chapter things heat up on that front (and in the bedroom, whoops).
> 
> picture of the celandine flower at the bottom :)

It was a Wednesday when the first person left, six years ago.

Your honest-to-goodness, plain ol’ average Wednesday, in the middle of the week and passing unnoticed as it always did, until Scott turned it inside out and made it all shit.

That’s not fair either, but Stiles doesn’t care, he’s sick of being fair and what Scott did wasn’t fair and nothing that’s ever happened in Beacon Hills has been _fair_ to anyone. He deserves a piece of that.

The day Scott left, the air was biting. It poured the kind of rain that could almost be called hail but isn’t quite solid enough. It was thick with intense humidity but still chilly and windy; it was chaotic and indeterminate, like it couldn’t decide what it wanted to be, a blizzard or a sauna. Uncharacteristic for March. But not supernatural, so no one batted an eye.

Batted, ha. Anyways.

They were playing video games on the couch at Stiles’s dad’s place when Scott told him. He wanted a better life, he said. He wanted a chance to feel normal, to go to school, to leave Allison’s ghost behind. He wanted to be happy.

It was all very fair. Very reasonable, very well-reasoned, very sympathetic. Very Scott.

So of course, Stiles hugged him. Of course, Stiles wished him well, and made him promise to call, and then made him strawberry-banana-chocolate-chip pancakes for dinner before walking him to his car, which was already packed with all of his stuff (that had somehow escaped Stiles’s previous notice). Then he got pelted with tiny balls of semi-solid liquid as they hugged for what would end up being the last time in 5 months.

He loves Scott. He really does. So he supported his friend’s decision.

That was also the night that Stiles decided to move out of his dad’s place, coincidentally.

The air was just too stifling there.

 

\--

 

It’s three hours before Isaac finally returns to the land of the non-traumatized.

A throat clears and Stiles actually startles, having been absorbed in reading through the many pages of old notes he’d written on his phone over the years. He was just dipping his toe into the section on poisonous tree frogs in East Asia and wondering how his phone could possibly store that much memory and who he has to thank for that, but when he hears it, he plops his phone down quickly.

It takes him a minute to reorient after the startle, to pull himself back and realize where he is and shit, his leg’s asleep.

He should fix that, fast. It’s disadvantageous to have a limb out of commission. He’s learned that the hard way. For one, if they were to be attacked, he would be dead weight for one of the wolves to--

Nope. Nope nope nope.

He doesn’t need these thoughts. He’s safe. Or, at least, lack-of-safety isn’t the point. The point is Isaac.

Who is staring at him, meekly, from behind a distinctly human, claws-free hand.

“Hey stranger,” Stiles chances, with what he hopes is a gentle smile.

Isaac can surely smell his dissipating panic, and that’s helpful to exactly no one here. Hopefully Derek won’t smell it too and end up bursting in with one of his dramatic entrances, but, then again, Derek is used to Stiles’s erraticism. He’ll probably think he just stepped on his phone or got startled by a squirrel.

Isaac blinks at him. He’s dropped to his butt, too, and now they’re both sitting like kids in a school assembly. Criss-cross applesauce.

It occurs to Stiles that this will be the first time that they’ve exchange words in upwards of 5 years. The first words that Isaac will say to him in almost a quarter of their lives, and while he and Isaac were never close, they were still sort-of-pack, and Stiles did just sit on the cold ground in the dark for him and drain his battery for 3 hours. So.

He doesn’t expect much, maybe just a ‘hi,’ or even a ‘thank you Stiles you’re the literal best,’ (guy can dream right? And it is fucking cold). When Isaac opens his mouth to speak he leans closer, prepared.

“Nice scarf,” Isaac says. 

“Are you kidding me, doucheknuckle?”

Stiles can’t help the laugh that’s torn out of him, crazy and a little desperate because it’s been so long since his throat has done this, and he can’t catch his breath, and he knew he shouldn’t have grabbed the scarf from the car, but it’s cold and he’s still in his pajamas and fuck, Isaac’s a douche.

“I hate you.”

Isaac bites his lip, corners of his mouth twitching up cautiously. “Do you?”

Stiles wants to fire back, wants to get revenge for having been quite thoroughly demolished in his own town, but he bites his tongue. Things are still sensitive.

“No.”

Isaac grins. “Missed you too.”

Stiles shakes his head, but he smiles too, and it’s already easy. “I did not.”

“Yes you did.” Isaac clears his throat again, and it alludes to how long it’s been since he spoke before this. “You love me-” he gives Stiles a pointed look, “- and my scarves.”

Stiles pokes self-consciously at the wool around his neck. “It was expensive, it would have been rude to get rid of it. But this is the first time I’ve worn it, ever. I was using it as an oven mitt. I’ve been hoping it’ll catch on fire.”

He wants to say that he forgot the gift was even from Isaac to begin with, but Isaac would hear the lie.

Isaac hears it now, too. He tilts his head, considering for a moment. “It looks good on you.”

Stiles chortles. “Thanks, asshole.”

There’s an awkward pause as the banter dies and the heavy weight of the situation they’re in settles back over their shoulders (like a scarf-- fuck, he hates metaphors. He should’ve lit the stupid thing on fire).

Isaac is still rocking just slightly, nibbling on the corner of his finger. He stares at Stiles with wide, imploring eyes, and despite the stubble, height, and sharper jawline, he looks achingly young again. “I’m sorry.”

But Stiles has already started talking, and it comes out at the same time. “Don’t be sorry.”

They share another second of awkward eye contact before Isaac lowers his gaze. It’s a sign, a pack thing, submission, but it’s also human. He’s embarrassed.

Stiles takes a deep breath. He’s too nice, too soft for his own good. He deserves an award for what he’s about to do.

“Hypervigilance,” he says.

Isaac squints, brow furrowed. “Huh?”

“Hypervigilance,” Stiles repeats. “It’s a symptom of PTSD, and a few other mental illnesses and stuff. Trauma, though. It’s about awareness of your environment, paranoia, an overactive nervous system. That kind of thing.”

Isaac is suddenly watching him with much more intensity, and he nods, but doesn’t say anything.

Stiles bites his hoodie sleeve. “There’s a moth, in the window. To the right behind me.” He sees Isaac’s eyes slide over, and a look of recognition as he sees it.

“There’s a pipe, on my left. The edge is broken so it has a sharp piece. It could be used to, uh, stab through someone’s spine, potentially.”

Isaac doesn’t look this time.

Stiles takes another breath. “After you all left, and I stayed, I saw a therapist. Once. It was a disaster, of course, because she didn’t know about the-” he waves a hand, indicating the entire building and the two wolves in the vicinity, “- but she did point me in the direction of PTSD. Then I remembered that old guidance counsellor, Deaton’s sister. I told her about, uh, drowning, and she told me about hypervigilance.”

“Drowning?”

“Yeah. Metaphorical, mostly.”

“Mostly.”

Isaac’s face is arranged in concentration, watching Stiles with his mouth slightly open like he always used to, and his breathing has slowed down a little, and maybe he’s getting somewhere with this. Stiles itches at his arm absently. “So. Just don’t be—don’t be self-conscious, okay?”

Isaac nods again, like it’s all he can manage, but he looks grateful and his tiny smile is practically blinding which is stupidly unfair. 

.“Alright,” Stiles asks, back in business. There are routines, checklists, action must eventually be taken. “Are you okay to move?”

His foot isn’t asleep anymore at least, thank jesus, but his muscles are going to be sore for hours and his throat is drier than his highschool self’s sex life. Ha. 

Oh, _that’s_ a conversation that they’re going to need to have with Isaac. 

And the whole, hey, I talk to plants now thing. 

But first, ravioli. Yeah, Stiles could use some ravioli. 

“You aren’t going to ask me what happened?”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Then no. Let’s go bring you to your ex-alpha. I’m sure he’s about ready to snap the doorframe.”

Isaac bites his lip, looking impish. “Yeah, he is. Well, he would be, but he already did that about 2 and a half hours ago.”

He stands in one fluid movement, squaring his shoulders, and all at once Stiles realizes what’s still off about him.

Stiles is seriously too fucking nice for his own good.

 

\--

 

Derek listens in with rising shame and dread as Stiles and Isaac talk. 

It’s not like he doesn’t know about Stiles’s issues, he does, but hearing him spell it out like that--

Stiles has never talked to Derek about any of it. It’s just something that they’re both aware of, peripherally, the same way that they’re aware of Derek’s crap. Stiles takes two hours to patrol the preserve before letting Derek anywhere near the old Hale house, and Derek disappears afterward. Stiles has semiregular dissociative episodes, and Derek has nightmares whenever a case at the Sheriff's station hits a little too close to home. 

Stiles has always done that for him, always been that for him. They both have their histories. 

It’s tense, and undefined, but what in Derek’s life has ever been any other way?

But hearing it--

Then they mention Derek, and the doorframe, and Derek drops the chunk of rock he’s been attempting to crumble in his fist like a child getting caught with something. He refuses to be that predictable.

Suffice to say, though, he’s struggling to control his shift by the time his old beta pokes his head out of the warehouse, with Derek’s-- with Stiles-- in tow. 

Stiles has given him his scarf. It’s weird, because now their scents have mixed and Isaac looks bundled up and hidden and Stiles is shivering and it’s so _familiar_ in the worst possible way.

He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do—what Stiles would want him to do. But then Stiles walks up to him and claps him on the shoulder, steady and grounding, and plants himself just subtly between him and Isaac. 

It seems like he’s going for normal. So Derek goes for simple.

“Hi,” he says, awkwardly. He’s officially the worst pack mate ever.

Which-- fuck. The question of that slams into him like a sledgehammer, leaving Derek winded. Can he still even call himself that? He’d told Stiles that Isaac wasn’t pack anymore, not the way he used to be, which is true. He’s certainly not his Alpha-- hasn’t been since Isaac sought out Scott-- but they were still bonded when Isaac left, fraught though it was. 

But then, it’s been years. So many years.

Derek still feels him, but Derek is a born wolf. And Derek is—well, he’s sure that Isaac isn’t still as lonely as he once was. It’s been _years._ Surely he’s moved on.

Plus he’s-- afraid? Of Derek? Triggered? The thought makes him sick.

Derek’s not allowed to touch. He’s not allowed to hug, or scent, or offer comfort.

Isaac nods a meek “hello,” and then Stiles seems to snap back to things, facing Derek with a look of determination. 

“I’m taking him back to my place,” he says, and the my shouldn’t hurt the way that it does.

It’s a little odd that Stiles is speaking for Isaac—shouldn’t they ask him what he wants?—but Derek stops that train of thought. Stiles has always been so much better at this than him. Stiles understands this type of thing. He said as much earlier.

Isaac doesn’t protest, so Derek grabs the keys out of his pocket and keeps quiet. “I’ll drive,” he says, like he has to actually say that. But Stiles nods anyways in agreement, like it was a suggestion.

“You need to stop for ravioli,” he says.

Sure, why not.

Derek turns toward the car, but he doesn’t miss the gentle touch that Stiles proffers to Isaac, the back of his hand brushing up Isaac’s shoulder and the base of his neck in a private gesture that Derek’s sure he wasn’t meant to see. But he did, and it makes him feel strangely empty.

His grits his teeth, feels his anger and quiets it, and gets in the car. He’s probably just tired, and hungry.

He starts the Camaro to drive them all home.

\--

 

Stiles brings Isaac back to his place. Alone.

Derek actually lets him take the Camaro, which is most definitely a sign of how guilty and useless he’s feeling. But Stiles thought it would be better for Isaac to spend as little time as possible squished in a car with the both of them, so. Sacrifices and all that. 

Isaac doesn’t seem to notice one way or another. Stiles actually has to nudge him with a gentle “come on” before Isaac gets out of the car, shivering and carrying all of his worldly possessions which at this point seems to be exactly zero things, give or take whatever he has stored wherever he was living before this.

Stiles unlocks the door with the key on his belt; he doesn’t have a spare for Isaac, but they can work that out. The screen door is broken anyways. 

It’s significantly brighter inside than it was outside, the kitchen light illuminating the entryway. There’s not a whole lot to see, he knows that. A small outdated kitchen. A few pieces of mismatched furniture that look like they’re from the 1990s (and mostly are). A whole bunch of plants.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” he explains as he toes off his shoes and gestures for Isaac to do the same. He’s not sure if he’s referring to his own decision to buy the house, or preemptively getting ahead of any snide comments.

He goes immediately to the cupboard, filling a cup with water and passing it off to Isaac. 

“I’ll make the ravioli, why don’t you go shower?” Stiles asks. He makes a face that he hopes adequately portrays how disgusting the beta smells. Isaac wrinkles his nose right back.

“Aren’t you going to shower?”

“Beggars can’t be choosers.”

Isaac nods like _touche._ He heads toward the stairs, pausing awkwardly at the bottom. “I don’t have anything for…”

“Feel free to use whatever’s in there. It’s unscented.” Derek wouldn’t have it any other way, and it’s easier when he showers here so often. “Towels are in the cupboard. Bathroom is the second door on the left. Oh, and my clean laundry is in my room, on the right. Pick a pair of pj bottoms to go commando with but choose wisely, because they’ll be yours now.”

Isaac nods again. After a second he pads upstairs.

Ravioli.

Stiles digs for a can opener (he’s got about 12, but they’re never clean) and washes it in silence. He’s not alone with his plants in here but it would be easier if they could actually talk back, aloud, so Stiles wouldn’t feel quite so crazy when he talks to them. 

He’s surprised into dropping his sponge by a streak of purple movement. As if the universe read his thoughts, a small butterfly pops up from behind the Spiderplant Row on the counter and flutters, aimlessly and adorably, in the air next to his hand. It can’t talk back either but at least it’s an upgrade where public perception is concerned.

“Oh. Hey, fella. Where did you come from?” He’s definitely sure that he left all the windows closed. 

Didn’t he? There’s a moment where his veins seem to freeze, and he rides out a flash of panic as the thought occurs to him that maybe someone’s opened one of his doors while he wasn't’ home. Maybe someone is in the house. Maybe they’re behind him. Maybe _he’s_ behind him-

But no. It’s more likely just the broken front door. Bugs get in all the time. That’s normal. Life is normal. 

Minus the literal werewolf in his shower, but eh, things happen. 

When the butterfly doesn’t leave he finds himself talking to it as well as the plants, telling them about his day and about finding Isaac and about how he’ll be staying here for a while, he hopes that’s okay, but don’t worry Isaac is safe, if a bit of a dick, but he’s a good dude. He heats the ravioli up in the microwave like a university student, ignoring the fact that this is technically going to be his breakfast, then waits.

When Isaac comes down he’s damp and soft looking but still vaguely straggly, unshaven and with the ashen look of someone who’s been away from home for too long. He’s also wearing one of Stiles’s old t-shirts and a pair of pajama bottoms with pictures of cartoon avocados that have various puns written between them, like “avaca-don’t give up!” and “let’s avocuddle.” 

They’re terrible, and Stiles won’t miss them.

He hands over the ravioli and Isaac takes it with yet another grateful nod. They eat in comfortable-- if a little awkward-- silence. Then Isaac clears his throat.

“Uhm. Who were you talking to, before?”

Stiles crinkles his eyebrows. “When?”

“In the kitchen.”

“Oh. My plants,” he says.

Isaac seems to take that in stride. He tilts his head a little, and says, “you don’t have any other friends?”

Kind of a low blow, because the reality is, Stiles doesn’t. Unless you count Mr. Brady the mailman that thinks he’s nuts, and Ms. Williams with her squirrels. And Derek, of course, sort of. But the tips of Isaac’s lips are turned up and he looks teasing, so Stiles just sighs. “Shut up and eat your ravioli.”

Isaac licks his lower lip, still looking pleased. Then he pauses and puts down his spoon. The noise and finality of the gesture seems significant; Stiles figures he should stop too, but he doesn’t. He’s hungry.

“To the plants,” Isaac starts, a little uncertain, “you were talking about-- you said that I’d be staying here for a few days.”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“You will be, won’t you?”

Isaac fidgets with his hands, and looks at his spoon like he wants to pick it up again. He says nothing.

“You can stay here,” Stiles says, emphatic. Isaac looks up.

“I- Really?”

Stiles shrugs. “Sure, why not? I’ve got space.”

He doesn’t, really. He’s also more than a little reluctant to add someone into his house. But a part of him feels like he’s been waiting for this, like he needs something that he can do. It’s a bit patronizing, thinking of Isaac like a pet project, but Stiles has been spinning his wheels for so long that it would be nice to get back into the game. He keeps seeing danger around every corner anyways, so why shouldn’t there be some actual action? 

As long as Isaac’s not bringing danger to his dad’s doorstep. He can’t risk his dad getting hurt. But his gut tells him that that’s not what this is-- that there’s no actual risk here-- and he usually listens to his instincts. 

He’s not going to overthink this. 

“I don’t want to be in the way,” Isaac hedges, and rubs at the back of his neck. It’s the kind of platitude that normally pisses Stiles off-- just a roadblock to an eventual yes that they both know they’ll get to-- but he finds that he doesn’t actually mind. 

Maybe he’s growing up. At this rate he’ll be an Actual Adult before he turns 30. How about it. 

“You won’t be.”

“I-“

“Isaac, if you want to stay here, then I want you to.”

“Okay.” The tips of Isaac’s ears are pink, but his expression recovers quickly as he switches gears. The chair screeches as he stands, and then he rinses the bowl quickly and deposits it in the sink. 

Then he does a little u-turn as he scopes out Stiles’s place. “This is nice.”

Stiles follows suit this time, standing up but leaving his plate on the table as he reaches for the closest leaves of a tall dieffenbachia, rubbing at it absently.

“Really? The plants tend to turn people off.”

Isaac shrugs. He walks through the living room, eyes scanning the place, and Stiles needs to reign in his anxiety about this because it’s no big deal to have someone checking out his house. It’s _normal._ He’s got nothing to hide (well, nothing serious anyways). Isaac’s not dangerous and he’s in no place to judge. It’s normal. This is normal. 

He still trails after him, though.

“There’s an awful lot of Derek’s stuff here.”

This time Stiles’s shrug is a little more careful. “He stays over a lot.” 

There’s not really a lot of Derek’s stuff, to be honest. He only owns a few things. It’s just that all of them are here, in the living room, because he’s anal about the bedroom and it’s not like they’re ever expecting any visitors.

Isaac raises an eyebrow, but says nothing. 

They walk through the rest of the lower floor, ending back up at the kitchen, and that’s pretty much the whole tour. 

Isaac looks calmer by the end, or at least calmer for him, which still means vibrating and vaguely aggressive-looking. His energy seems softer though, slowed down and a little gentler around the edges. He’s far from the kid that he used to be who was ready to beat someone up at the first chance just to be the one throwing the punches for once.

Of course, he looks kind of awful now, having slept (or not slept) in a literal dilapidated building, but time has treated Isaac well. If he were anywhere near Stiles’s type-- or not Isaac-- he might consider it, but as it is, he just has to give the guy some respect. Even the scarf that he put back on over Stiles’s old t-shirt doesn’t look horrible.

“Nice spider plant,” Isaac remarks, in that irritating way he has that walks the line between sarcastic and genuine. He’s pointing at Murry, though, so Stiles thinks he must be serious. Murry’s a good one.

“He likes you,” Stiles says, and Isaac blinks. He decides not to explain. It’s been a long night.

“Uhm, where does Derek sleep?” Isaac asks, after the silence has steeped into awkward. Now it’s Stiles’s turn to blink at him.

“What?”

“Derek? Where does he usually sleep when he stays over? I can just, go there, if that’s easiest.”

Stiles must not hide his bi panic fast enough, because Isaac squints suspiciously. “You said he sleeps over, right?”

“Yeah, he, uh, usually goes on the couch. Like any guest would, you know.”

Which, seriously? Stiles is supposed to better at this.

He’s fucked now though. Isaac’s eyes trail up toward the ceiling, and back toward Stiles’s flushed face. “Don’t tell me that you and Derek are-“

“Fucking.”

There’s no fucking way that he’s letting Isaac finish that sentence.

“A _thing,_ ” Isaac finishes anyways. He looks so smug about it that Stiles kind of wants to sick Murry on him. If only.

“Fucking,” Stiles asserts. “How did you even pick up on that? You’ve hardly seen us together.”

Isaac just rolls his eyes, which is 100% not an actual answer, the asshole. He steps over the crap on the floor gingerly and fluffs out his stupid gorgeous hair as he heads back toward the living room. “I’m going to bed. On the couch. Goodnight, Stiles.”

Right. Just add that to the list of shit that Stiles has to deal with. 

Not-Dating Derek Hale 101 would come in handy in times like these. Maybe How to Deal with the Obnoxious Sort-of-Ex-Pack-Adjacent Beta Who’s Just Moved into Your House 101 too, for good measure.

Fuck.

“Blankets are in the cupboard,” he mumbles, because he may hate the guy, but he doesn’t _hate_ him, and he’s just been sleeping in a warehouse so he could probably use some blankets.

He’ll have to fill Isaac in on the details of his garden, and his houses’s general… weirdness tomorrow, but that seems like the kind of thing to be tackled after coffee and breakfast. 

Hopefully Isaac doesn’t decide on the field trip to the backyard before then.

It’ll probably be fine.

 

\---

 

It actually does end up being fine, which is a ridiculous shocker with Stiles’s history.

Derek comes over the next day-- during the actual daytime-- to check in on Isaac, though he looks supremely uncomfortable about the entire interaction. He’s wearing his leather jacket again, in _June,_ and Stiles can’t help a dramatic face-palm. 

Isaac, for his part, looks like he wants to up and climb out through the window that Derek just came in from. 

It’s clear that he’s trying not to appear that way, though. It could be because he’s scared of angering Derek by being meek, but Stiles suspects that it’s more likely that he just doesn’t want to hurt Derek’s feelings. 

Either way, it makes for an incredibly uncomfortable lunch, with Stiles filling in the empty conversational space (all of it) by keeping up an endless (one-sided) stream of chatter. 

It’s a little surprising that Derek isn’t grilling Isaac. There is an awful lot of sniffing going on though, and it’s actually sweet, how Derek thinks he’s being subtle even while his nose is halfway to Isaac’s neck at any given point. The laser-like focus with which he keeps checking for signs of injury is disconcertingly familiar.

As soon as Isaac’s done wolfing down his food (neither of them appreciate the pun; Stiles is surrounded by heathens) he excuses himself to go who-knows-where. 

Derek grips the table the entire time, as if to keep from chasing after him. It makes Stiles want to grip a table too, to let the beta go so soon, But Isaac’s promised to be back the next day, so.

They have to trust him. 

(If there’s a tiny part of Stiles that thinks that maybe Isaac is just going to leave, like he never showed up, and not come back-- and if that tiny part of him wonders if maybe that’s actually the best thing for Isaac, to get away-- then Stiles is just going to squash that right down, thank you very much).

“Don’t forget,” Stiles shouts after him, “don’t touch anything living on this property. So help me Isaac, I swear to god--” 

Isaac grunts in recognition, then Stiles and Derek are left alone. In the daytime.

In Stiles’s house. 

_During the day._

Huh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hmu on [Tumblr.](http://www.wewalkadifferentpath.tumblr.com) or twitter @adifferentpath.
> 
> I imagine the avocado pj bottoms looking sort of like [these](https://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2F8f%2Fb4%2Ffd%2F8fb4fdad2f0131fb9383d94c75777b9b.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinterest.co.uk%2Fpin%2F244953667212919703%2F&docid=QFllbr51E4CJwM&tbnid=x1Zrx6YkeV5y6M%3A&vet=10ahUKEwi5zezfyu_cAhWa0YMKHcbZDcUQMwiHASgLMAs..i&w=870&h=1110&bih=701&biw=1280&q=avocado%20pj%20bottoms&ved=0ahUKEwi5zezfyu_cAhWa0YMKHcbZDcUQMwiHASgLMAs&iact=mrc&uact=8) [tops.](https://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.asos-media.com%2Fproducts%2Fasos-avocado-tee-short-pyjama-set%2F7888957-1-multi%3F%24XXL%24%26wid%3D513%26fit%3Dconstrain&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.asos.com%2Fau%2Fasos%2Fasos-avocado-tee-short-pyjama-set%2Fprd%2F7888957&docid=NgrKUHuOgcAHFM&tbnid=bqeM2H5b_NFh9M%3A&vet=10ahUKEwicwd_5yu_cAhUl4oMKHRQCCJoQMwg8KAAwAA..i&w=513&h=655&bih=701&biw=1280&q=avocado%20puns%20pj%20bottoms&ved=0ahUKEwicwd_5yu_cAhUl4oMKHRQCCJoQMwg8KAAwAA&iact=mrc&uact=8)
> 
> Celandine:  
> 


	3. Purple Carnation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is missing some editing, I'll admit, because I'm not home this week and things are kind of crazy, so sorry about that! But I wanted to get it out there before I lost my streak and with it, my motivation (y'all know how it goes).
> 
> So look. I'm not saying that I'm a slut for validation but... I'm a slut for validation. let me know what y'all think of how things are going down.
> 
> trigger warning for dissociation, nightmares, black-outs, violence, and paranoia

Derek doesn’t come in through the window again at nighttime, because, well, he’s already in the house. So there’s no signal or anything for when they’ll switch from quietly cohabiting to being together. There’s no announcement or question, it just sort of happens.

Stiles starts fidgeting where he’s reading on the couch and Derek raises his eyebrows like _bed?_ So Stiles puts his book down.

Derek scrunches his forehead in an adorable-rather-than-scowly way and refocuses on reading double-time while Stiles waits. He’s not so good at the waiting part, though, so he’s already managed to pull all of the lint off of his hoodie and the blanket by the time that Derek closes the laptop a few minutes later.

They follow each other up the stairs. Derek goes in first, opening the bedroom door and taking a few deliberate sniffs before he moves aside to let Stiles through. Then he turns and heads back downstairs, while Stiles gets the mat ready.

It’s dark in the room, and the air is early-summer-dusk still, but Stiles is calm. At least, he’s pretty sure that he’s calm enough. 

Comparatively.

When Derek comes back up a minute later he immediately nods in his stoic, all business way: the door is locked, windows are locked, no one is in the house. Stiles tilts his head and he nods again: oven is off, phone is plugged in. Good.

Stiles steps back as Derek goes for the mat, and doesn’t linger while Derek takes off his jeans and swaps them for sweatpants. Derek doesn’t really like it when he watches this part. So Stiles heads to the bathroom and tries not to stare at the mirror too hard while he brushes his teeth. Then he pees, avoids the mirror again while he washes his hands, and comes back out just in time to see him switch from the Sun Salutation on one side to the other.

Stiles pulls out his phone and settles into bed.

This had taken some serious getting used to. The whole 'sleeping together' thing.

Because the thing is, they aren’t just sleeping together. Well, they are, but they’re also _sleeping_ —together, in the same bed—afterwards, most of the time. For the longest time Derek used to crawl back out the window like the cryptid stalker he was born to be, but eventually that became sort of impractical when they were fucking as often as they were. So now they sleep together, which in theory is easy peasy because they’re grown-ass adults who can share a bed. But the issue is-- well, the issue is that they’re both fucked in the head, and Stiles likes his space and kicks in his sleep and Derek has nightmares and runs like a furnace and and and-- Well. It had taken some getting used to.

It’s old hat, now, though. Thank god.

Once Derek’s done he takes his turn in the bathroom, while Stiles gets their supplies ready. It’s actually almost boring, how routine it is now.

But boring can be good. No evil, fucked up and surprisingly sexy daydream ever started with the sound of someone pissing in the bathroom.

Besides, he’s about to have sex. With Derek Hale. So, win.

A thought that’s reaffirmed when he looks up to see Derek leaning on the entryway to the bathroom, watching him with fierce intensity. When he sees Stiles notice him, he smirks, and _fuck,_ yeah it’s definitely not boring anymore.

Heart already pounding, Stiles smiles. “Hey.”

Derek scrapes his teeth over his bottom lip and cocks a hip against the doorframe, the bastard. “Hey.”

Two can play at that game.

Stiles leans back on the bed, placing his phone carefully on the side table. He clenches his jaw, tilting his head up in that teasing way that he knows makes Derek’s wolf itch. “Come here often?”

“Now and again,” Derek says. He actually ducks his head as he speaks, a tiny, bashful smile on his face, and that’s really fucking playing dirty. His fists are clenched at his sides though, and there’s tension running through the lines of his body, taut and electric.

Yeah, he’s _so_ about to get laid.

“How do you want me?” Stiles whispers. Derek’s eyes flash at that, and something swoops low in his stomach.

“On the bed. On your back.”

“Mm… are you sure you don’t want me to take my clothes off, first? You’re gonna miss out on—“

Derek crosses the room in two quick strides and growls low in his chest. He climbs the bed and has his thighs pinning Stiles hips down in another flash as he straddles him, knocking Stiles onto his back.

“I gave an order.”

“I was clarifying.”

“You were being obtuse.”

Derek reaches for Stiles’s wrists and grabs them firmly, cutting through his half-hearted resistance like butter and pinning them above his head.

He’s still growling, and now Stiles can feel it reverberating through the base of his stomach. It’s terrifying. In the best, sexiest possible way.

“Colour?” Derek asks. He rucks up Stiles’s shirt with his chin as he waits for an answer and mouths a line into his stomach, eyes fluttering up to make eye contact under his impossibly gorgeous eyelashes. His stubble scrapes across Stiles's lower abs.

“So fucking green.”

“Good. ‘Cuffs?”

“Second drawer. They’re clean.”

Derek nods and shifts his weight so he can grip both of Stiles’s crossed wrists with one hand and open the drawer with the other. He pulls them out quickly and snaps them on one wrist, attaching it to the headboard, and then stops again. “Colour?”

It’s terrible, the way Derek’s studying his face, because it’s so fucking intense. Stiles is going to melt. He’s actually going to melt, Wizard-of-Oz style, right here on the bed. What a way to go.

“Still green,” Stiles manages to choke out. And then, for good measure, “You?”

Derek’s eyes widen a little. His pupils are so blown; thank god Stiles isn’t the only one already feeling this. “Green.”

“Great. Great, yeah, let’s uh, get on with this then.”

“Patience,” Derek chides. He drags a punishing finger down Stiles’s collarbone. It’s a forest fire where it lands, a trail of sparks and raw nerve. He clips Stiles’s other hand into the cuffs and then tugs on them a little, testing the resistance on the headboard.

“I’ve had to watch you all day,” Derek murmurs into his neck. He licks a small strip at the base of Stiles’s throat and Stiles bucks his hip, searching for resistance. “I’ve had to watch you _all day._ ”

It’s new, this acknowledgment of their outside-the-bedroom time. Stiles didn’t actually consider that Derek may have been checking him out or attracted to him in such a _normal_ way; the thought makes his ears warm.

“So…. You’re not going anywhere. Not until I’ve had my mouth on every single nook and cranny of your body.” Derek leans up to kiss one wrist, then the other. “Twice.”

Fuck.

“Fuck.”

Derek smiles in that slow, lazy way of his, leaning back to survey his work.

“What about my shirt?” Stiles asks. Their clothes need to be off, goddammit.

Derek looks at down at said shirt for a moment, then his grin widens. He flicks a claw out. “You don’t like this one anyways.”

And then the claw is slicing through Stiles’s fucking shirt, millimeters away from the skin of his chest, and flaying it open like a fish. Un-fucking-real. Even after two years, he manages to come up with this bullshit to tick off every box on some like fantasy sex bucket list and-

“Wait, is the window—“

Derek’s eyes flit in the direction of the window, then back down. “Closed. Locked.”

Stiles knows that. He closed them, he was _there._ Still, though.

“The curtains—?“

“They’re closed,” Derek confirms. He looks more amused than annoyed at the interruption. “I’ve got it.” His tongue flicks out and he leans back over Stiles, looming and solid. “I’ve got you.”

Stiles manages a nod. He closes his eyes for a moment to make the room stop spinning before remembering that Derek likes to see them. He blinks them back open.

Derek’s watching him with careful concern. It should be reverence and hunger.

And Stiles should be more focused, here. Derek Hale is sitting on his fucking hips and has him pinned to the headboard. He’s not going to think about windows. Or doors. Which is—yep, is closed all the way.

He’s also not going to think about daydreams. Not at all, not even a little.

“Enough, Stiles.”

Right. “Okay.”

“Do I need to get the blindfold?” His eyes are fully amber now. If it were darker in here, they’d glint. If Stiles let him turn off the lights, like a normal-

A brush of lips against his bare knee makes Stiles startle. Thank god Derek’s pinning it down, or he would’ve gotten a kick in the face. Not that it would be the first time.

Another kiss hits just above his knee. Then above that, and above that, millimeter by millimeter. They’re overlapping as they go up, but yeah, it’s definitely a pattern.

A very, very distracting pattern.

“Do I need,” another kiss, “to get,” another, “the blindfold?”

“No. I want to—I want to see you.”

Derek’s breath is a warm ghost across his thigh. “Then you will.”

“For the record, I don’t like these shorts that much either.”

“Nice try.”

“Or your shirt.”

“Mmhm.”

Derek’s clearly gone to the ignore-Stiles place. Where he’s still, of course, vigilantly and meticulously keeping an eye on every single facet of Stiles’s body language and smell to make sure that he’s okay. (How he manages to do that and skim right over all of Stiles’s crap at the same time is no small feat, but Stiles is grateful).

Derek’s hands are skimming over his skin everywhere it’s exposed. The weight of his body is pressing his crotch into Stiles’s, but the way he’s caging him prevents any movement. So Stiles has to lie there, with Derek’s dick tantalizingly, teasingly close to his own, where he can feel the heat, but he can’t get any friction.

Sometimes he really hates Derek.

“I’m going to make you beg, and then I’m going to make you forget your own name.”

Stiles wouldn’t have it any other way, frankly.

\--

(Derek makes good on that promise. Twice.

Stiles falls asleep what must be hours later, sated and boneless, with the evidence of it still on his stomach and Derek’s weight still steady and solid above him).

\--

 

It actually works okay, Derek thinks. This being together thing.

Stiles had looked immediately flustered once Isaac left yesterday. As if Derek has never been in his house when the sun’s up before. As if they didn’t just bake together, the other week. Admittedly, it was evening then, but still, Derek thinks that it counts.

He was tempted to point that out at the time, but he also knew that he wasn’t supposed to.

Breakfast this morning is easier. Maybe it’s because they both know they’ll be parting ways right after, but Derek would like to think it’s because something has settled.

They’ve done breakfast before.

Not when things are calm, though. Not since there stopped being threats to keep them up all night until they passed out on the loft’s floor, and then had awkward coffee and toast afterwards for sustenance. Not when things have felt this… fragile. But they have done it.

Stiles holds the peanut butter out wordlessly, and Derek grabs it on the way to the cupboard, pulling out two mugs for coffee. He opens the fridge and then gets out of the way, filling the cups as Stiles grabs the jam for himself then closes the fridge with his shoulder. Stiles passes a knife to Derek with a tired movement and they both spread their toast in amicable silence, a rare, warm breeze trailing through the window, reminding Derek of the way he’d touched Stiles last night. Soft and light, all over his body.

Derek has always found silences with Stiles to be comfortable enough. Stiles has always been iffy on that front.

But it was abundantly clear that Stiles didn’t enjoy the one yesterday, once the reality of Isaac leaving set it.

_“How’s your garde-”_

__

__

_“How’re the-”_

They had both spoken at the same time, and Derek huffed, smiling in a way that he hoped was comforting as he gestured for Stiles to go first.

_“How are the translations?” Stiles asked. His leg was bouncing and he was fidgeting, smelling like awkward._

It was a predictable question. Stiles doesn’t ask about his volunteering with the Sheriff’s station, so that’s his fall back.

Derek had answered amicably, explaining about his most recent project translating a paper on perovskites-- for solar energy-- from Spanish to English. Then he’d asked after the garden, which is a touchier subject, and Stiles had responded in kind with a few terse one-word answers.

_“You didn’t tell me that Isaac snores like a truck driver."_

__

__

_“Yeah, he did that with me too. I can loan you my earplugs if you need them, they’re industrial strength.”_

He wasn’t actually kidding. The only person Derek’s ever met who could top Isaac’s snoring was Cora.

He didn’t mention her, though. They don’t talk about Derek’s family. He doesn’t even remember the last time he said the word family aloud. It seems like it would sound foreign now, the way that saying your name over and over makes it eventually stop sounding real.

It’s fine. It wasn’t the time, or the place, so he didn’t bring her up.

_Stiles shrugged, nibbling on his hoodie sleeve. “It’s fine. I haven’t been sleeping much lately anyways.”_

Stiles did look exhausted, the purple under his eyes standing out in a way that makes his skin look thin. It was sort of haunting, in a beautiful way, but the thought makes Derek ache even this morning. Stiles has been well with his sleep the past couple of years.

It hurts that Stiles has to be worried about this again.

Now, Derek watches him drain is coffee, satisfied at least that he slept well the night before.

He takes a second to inhale deeply, trying to freeze the smell and the sun and the warm feeling in his bones like a snapshot. There’s something comforting-- if a bit melancholy-- about breakfasts. Breakfast is a constant. No matter what else is going on, there’s always a first time you eat in the day, so long as you do eat that day. Even if it doesn’t feel like breakfast, even if you don’t want it to be, it is, by definition. Every day.

Stiles thunks his mug down and turns to Derek with a tired but genuine smile. “See you tonight?”

Derek just nods, wordless.

Then they both leave. Through the front door.

The domesticity almost hurts for a reason that Derek doesn’t want to understand.

 

\--

Isaac does come back that day. He and Stiles both pretend that they aren't surprised by it.

They move him in, sort of.

Stiles clears out his office and Derek brings over a spare bed from his apartment. No one mentions that Isaac could’ve just moved to Derek’s apartment instead.

Stiles does jazz hands when Isaac tells them that they better keep the noise down in the next room over, because, “oops, bythewayDerekIsaacknowsaboutourfucking.” Isaac complains that the room smells like 'weeks worth of wild sex' and Stiles enthusiastically high fives himself when he thinks that they aren’t looking. Derek is unimpressed enough with the whole exchange that he hides his smile with a cough.

He also flicks Stiles on the forehead for the self-high-five, but really, he concurs with the sentiment.

\--

 

A few days later, he comes home from the Sheriff’s station to see Stiles and Isaac both in Stiles’s bedroom, staring at the wall with intense concentration.

(No, not _home_ \-- Stiles’s house. Derek goes to Stiles’s house. _His_ home is empty).

They don’t move a muscle as Derek opens the window and climbs through. He closes it back up behind himself with excruciating slowness; the sound is way too loud in the quiet space, so filled as it is by their focus. Everything feels loud-- too loud, too much, too foggy.

Derek should probably just ask, but he’s had a shitty, emotionally taxing day. So of course he does the totally sensible, adult thing: he stares at the wall too, waiting to see something.

After a few blank minutes-- during which Derek sees absolutely nothing on the wall-- Stiles honest to god shrieks, tumbling backward and catching himself on the bed with the near-miss of someone who’s used to breaking their own fall.

“There, there, see!” he yells. “I told you he was still alive!”

Isaac rolls his eyes, but also backs away warily. “Okay, well, just kill it.”

Something about that makes Derek's heart rate increase. Kill. _Kill kill kill._

He feels it, but he doesn't process it. He’s tired. It feels like he shouldn’t be here. He should be home. His home.

“No way that I’m going near it.”

Derek nods to himself slowly. Going near dead things would be bad. No- not dead. It’s not dead, not yet. Not that he still knows what _it_ is.

He sighs silently, huffing out a slow exhalation. He takes a second to store up the mental energy required to open his mouth and make words come out, trying to wade through the haze in his mind.

He’s just opened his mouth when his phone goes off-- he brings it to his ear with some fumbling.

“What.” That’s probably not polite, but the word was already on its trajectory. Oh well, people are used to Derek.

Stiles and Isaac ignore the whole exchange. Of course they do. Derek’s not supposed to be here.

“Hey, Derek, it’s Jenna. Have you or Stiles seen the Sheriff?”

Derek crinkles his eyebrows. It takes him a long minute to come up with the answer. “No?”

“Okay. Well nothing to worry about, he was just supposed to take next shift after you and hasn’t shown up yet. It’s pretty nasty again outside so he’s probably just in traffic. I’ll check in with Stiles a little later if he doesn’t show up, okay?”

Thank god she’s decided to take over the conversation in her usual bubbly and efficient way. He should really thank her for all the times she's done that for him. He should really thank a lot of people, shouldn't he? Wait-- she’s right, too; the Sheriff was supposed to be there as Derek was leaving. He hadn’t noticed.

It was probably one of what Stiles would call his “nightmare pending days.” He tends to miss a lot of details on these days.

He should still have noticed, though.

“Isaaaac,” Stiles whines in the background. Isaac shakes his head and makes a nuh uh sound. “Isaac!”

“Sure,” Derek manages into the phone. Then “thanks,” because he’s not totally useless. Not totally.

He hangs up, and Stiles and Isaac still haven’t looked away from the wall, and Derek really, really just wants to go to bed, 6pm or not. He needs a less subtle approach.

Limbs feeling heavy, he grabs Stiles’s huge textbook-- plant history, or something-- off the desk and drops it; it hits the ground with a loud thwack.

Isaac startles a bit-- which Derek has just enough energy to feel guilty about-- but Stiles barely moves, still eyeing the wall like it’s going to personally jump out and attack him. “Derek,” he says, “there’s one of those--” he wiggles his fingers-- “evil googly bug fuckers. Can you, you know-”

Of all the bugs in the world that Stiles gets along with, he apparently decided at some point that _centipedes_ are where he draws the line ( _they’re public enemy number one, Derek! Have you seen them run?_ ). That must be what he’s talking about.

Derek wipes a hand over his face. He crosses Stiles’s eyeline-- which causes Stiles to weave and dodge, because of course he has to maintain eye contact-- and grabs a cup and some paper. He finally spots the bug, just a little thing, and places the cup over it on autopilot, sliding the paper under it the way he’s seen Stiles do. Then he opens the window again and lets the bug through onto the roof, closing it firmly behind him. It still feels too loud, and he wants to flinch away, or apologize for the noise, or something, but at least the job's done and the bug is out.

Not dead. Derek’s a murder-- no, Derek’s a predator. Not a murderer. Not a murderer.

Stiles glares at the window and opens his mouth to speak, probably about it not being far enough away to be safe, but Derek’s expression must dissuade him. Instead he steps back from the wall and brushes his hands together, mumbling something that sounds like “motherfucker piece of shit” under his breath. Then he starts humming, some vague rendition of what Derek numbly recognizes as The Final Countdown. 

“Great. Thanks, Der. Now we can eat.”

Derek plants himself in the room while Stiles walks out, hoping that’ll do the work of making it clear that he’s not following. He’s not hungry. He just wants to sleep.

Isaac pauses on the way out. Derek tries not to flash his eyes. He dropped the book, he made Isaac startle. Flashing eyes would probably be not good right now.

He doesn’t have the energy to apologize, though.

“Why didn’t you kill it?” Isaac asks.

It’s a harmless question. But it’s also not. Derek knows what Isaac thinks of him. Some distant part of him also knows that he should probably take this as an olive branch-- he misses Isaac, he wants Isaac’s trust, Isaac is talking to him-- but another part is still seeing _bodies kill predator_ on a loop in his head, superimposed over case files edged with the smell of fire.

He doesn’t have the energy for more words. He doesn’t know how to say _I know that I’ve killed so many but I’ve still seen enough death today._ So he just shrugs.

Isaac nods, and closes the door on the way out.

 

\--

Derek’s woken up a few hours later by the Dr. Evil theme song.

He rolls over with a huff, grabbing the water on the nightstand (did Stiles put that there?) and chugging some down, clearing his throat as a test. He definitely feels better than he did.

Or would feel better, if he didn’t know exactly what this theme song meant. Stiles may change it every time he steals Derek’s phone but it’s always on the same vein.

It's evil!  
But being wrong is right, so then you're good again,  
which is the evilest thing of all…

“Hi Peter.”

“Derek! My young nephew. How are you.”

Derek elects not to answer, instead stretching his legs and standing slowly. He opens the bedroom door and pokes an ear out; Isaac’s in his bedroom listening to music, Stiles is in the living room reading.

It’s the first time that in as long as he can remember that he’s fallen asleep while Stiles was still awake; the thought surprises him

Derek aims for the stairs. He should really apologize for acting like a bit of a dick when he got home. Maybe to Isaac, too, eventually, though somehow the thought fills him with a sick, empty pit.

_Are you lonely? Were you bored? Was it for the power?_

Derek’s still a pile of trauma, and he’s still making stupid mistakes.

“How’s that boy of yours, Derek? What was his name?”

Derek rolls his eyes. His uncle is fond of this game, but he’s not in the mood.

And Stiles is not his boy.

“Ah yes, Stiles! Scrappy human. I’ve heard he has a lovely garden.”

Even Derek has enough cognitive faculty to translate that as: I would like you to know that I’ve been talking to Cora, and that she tells me some of the things that you tell her about Stiles. For what reason his uncle would drop that, he’s not sure, but it wouldn’t be anything other than deliberate.

“What.” Peter will fill in the do-you-want just fine for himself.

Except he doesn’t. “You know, I used to be quite fond of gardening actually.”

Derek’s about to finally pipe up and tell Peter that yes, he knows, and really, what does he want, when the phone is snatched out of his hand.

“I don’t fucking believe you,” Stiles greets.

“Hello, Stiles.”

“I don’t fucking believe you.”

“I’m not sure that I know what you mean,” Peter says, but he sounds too smug for Derek’s liking. Stiles seems to agree, judging by the gesturing and eye rolling.

“About the gardening, you smug asshole,” Stiles hisses. “Gardening, the way that I do it, there’s no way that you’ve ever done that. Not respectfully. Gardening properly changes a person. It teaches you about life, and about how things are connected, and about what it feels like to hold the life of an entire ecosystem in your hands and have to make decisions about what goes, and what stays. What deserves to live and what has to go, despite how hard each plant is clinging to life. Gardening comes with morality, and I don’t fucking believe you, you crazy bastard.”

Stiles’s eyes are blazing by the time he’s done his speech, and he’s practically panting, and despite the shitty day and the guilt and Peter on the phone, Derek’s never been more turned on in his life.

He lied before, about his favourite Stiles look- the one where he looks most like himself.

It’s this one.

There’s a surprisingly long pause at the other end of the phone, and then, quietly, “I said _used to,_ Stiles.”

Stiles looks genuinely shocked at the vulnerable sincerity in Peter’s voice, pulling the phone away from his head to stare at it. Derek knows the feeling.

But just as quickly, Peter’s back to cold congeniality. “Do try to clear your ears out next time, before you insist on screaming in mine.”

“Fuck you, you-”

“Miss you too, kid.”

Derek takes the phone back before Stiles has a chance to hang up.

-

When Derek hangs up a few absolutely pointless minutes later, Stiles is staring at him.

He’s back on the couch, legs curled into his chest, his cell phone beside him. It’s got to be late night again, since Derek came home near their usual time and then slept for a while, but Stiles looks totally awake. He’s lost his keyed up, aggressive energy, but it’s clear that he’s not going to be sleeping any time soon.

Derek can already see how the rest of the night is going to play out. Stiles’s room is soundproofed. Isaac will be asleep soon. Stiles needs something to calm him down, to relieve him of that tense energy, to channel it into tiredness.

Derek’s happy to play that role. It’s not like he doesn’t get something out of it himself.

He already feels a little antsy too in fact, ready for the release, ready to get his mouth on Stiles again--

“Are you alright?” Stiles asks, eyes clear and sincere. “Earlier, with the bug-- I didn’t notice at the time, but-- was it one of those days?”

Derek just nods. It was, and he’ll be fine. Stiles keeps staring at him though, so he adds, “pretty gruesome old case files.”

Stiles picks at his hoodie. The red one, with plaid; it makes him look soft and earthy. “My dad’s work called.”

Oh, right.

“Yeah, me too,” Derek says. Stiles reels back a little.

“What?”

“Before I fell asleep, in your room-” Derek gestures to the ceiling, already feeling more guilty over this now that he’s seeing it clearly. He should’ve told Stiles. Jenna actually asked if Stiles had seen the Sheriff, didn't she? And Derek answered for him, without even asking. “Just about him being late.”

Stiles nods. “Yeah, it was the same for me. I’m just--” he shakes his head and reaches for the lamp next to the couch, switching it on. Derek’s surprised it wasn’t already on. “It’s been hours now.”

Derek steels his resolve and then crosses the room, grabbing Murray the Spiderplant on the way over and depositing him into Stiles’s lap. “No news is good news, right?”

Stiles spares a small, fond small for Murray, petting him almost like a cat as he cooes. It’s vaguely ridiculous, and Derek’s turned on all over again. But now is really not the time for that.

“Maybe,” Stiles says with a shrug. “I mean, he’s probably just asleep or something, you know how he overworks himself. But-” he cuts himself off and shakes his head. “No, it’s probably nothing.” He shakes his head a little harder, as if disputing the first head shake, and then sighs. “It’s just that it’s never nothing.”

“Occam’s razor,” Derek notes. “Sometimes the simplest solution is the one you have to choose to believe, because there’s no logical reason to complicate things.”

Stiles kicks his feet up on the armrest of the couch, shifting Murray in his lap, and blows air through his lips. “Yeah, well, Okkam clearly never visited Beacon Hills.”

Derek gives him a stern look, and he turns it right back. “I’m serious. So, what, Derek, people should just believe that you’re a gruff, hairy loner who works out enough to be able to lift cars, heals really fast because of lucky genes, and likes to smell people? That would’ve been the simplest explanation for you. No, in Beacon Hills, Occam doesn’t need a razor. He needs to add hair. Like, a lot of it. Big, fuzzy, supernatural, werewolfy hair.”

“The razor wasn’t actually for hair, it’s just a—“

“I know, Derek! It’s an analogy, or metaphor, or whatever.”

“I actually hate metaphors,” he counters. Cora once pointed out, rather poignantly, that once your life has _literally_ been burned to ashes around you, they’re just less fun somehow.

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Suck it up, you started it. My point is, in this town, the most likely explanation is the one that’s the most likely to fuck up all of our lives.”

Derek wants to ask if he’s sure that this isn’t the hypervigilance talking; Stiles is extra paranoid about his dad, especially since he stopped being involved with law enforcement and stopped living at home. But maybe half of the problem right now is because Stiles knows _exactly_ how paranoid he is.

So he doesn’t say anything.

Stiles doesn’t either. He just quietly vibrates from his spot on the couch, his hand compulsively tapping out The Final Countdown against the phone at his hip, and pretends to read about hydrodynamics, the same way that he did when Isaac left them alone together.

\--

 

The next morning they get a call.

It’s Parrish.

\--

“Where is he?” Stiles asks. He’s pacing, now; this is turning bad, fast. “Where’s my dad?”

All of the nurses unfortunate enough to be on duty in the waiting room at 5am are giving them a wide berth, shooting nervous glances at the spectacle that is Stiles Stilinski, worried about his father.

“Where’s Melissa?”

“She’s not on duty until 7,” one brave front desk worker tells Stiles, for the eighth time.

“Where’s my dad?”

It takes 13 and a half asks until someone finally finds out, and directs them to room 137.

\--

“Where is the bastard?”

“Stiles,” his dad cautions. They both know where this is going.

Stiles does, too. “Tell me.”

“No. You need to calm down, son.”

Stiles whirls on him. “Calm down? How the hell am I meant to do that, dad? How can I calm down when you were this close to being killed?”

Stiles’s dad grits his teeth. “Yeah, _I_ was. Stiles, it happened to me—you don’t get to lose it on my behalf.”

Stiles snorts, shaking his head. “Death doesn’t happen to you. You told me that. I would’ve been the one getting the phone call. I would’ve been the one finding your body!”

“But I’m fine, Stiles. I’m okay. I’m barely even injured, just a few bruises.”

Derek’s not an expert, and he shouldn’t be judging the way that a father speaks to his son (he shouldn’t be judging any social interaction at all, with his track record) but it seems like the constant switching of tactics is just making Stiles more agitated.

Stiles takes a shuddery breath. “Where is he?”

The Sheriff shakes his head. “He’s a harmless kid, Stiles. He was just angry and scared and he wanted leverage, he was never intending to hurt me.” Stiles makes a gesture like _well he did,_ and his dad rolls his eyes. “This is a police department matter. The kid’s kind of an idiot, and kidnapping is a serious crime. They’ll find him within the night.”

“So they don’t know here he is.”

The Sheriff pinches the bridge of his nose, resigned. “No.”

“Fuck.” Stiles’s pacing stops but his kinetic energy doesn’t, and he plops into the chair next to the bed, leg vibrating. “Fuck, dad.”

They both have a look that Derek recognizes. It’s the expression of someone who’s been in this situation far too many times. Derek would bet anything that both Stiles and his dad could identify the smell of a hospital with the precision of a wolf, pick out the sounds of heart monitors in a crowd of a hundred noises. The way that Stiles settles into the chair, sliding it forward and leaning over to grasp his dad’s hand, is too fluid, too heavy, to be anything but muscle memory.

It’s devastating, and all at once Derek feels like he shouldn’t have come here.

Derek’s—Derek’s not good at this. Physical comfort. Any kind of comfort. And he and Stiles aren’t like that, but he thinks this time maybe he’s supposed to be. Melissa won’t be here for another hour at least, so Derek’s the only one.

Remembering what Stiles used to do to comfort him, Derek puts a cautious hand on Stiles’s shoulder.

Stiles starts and looks up, like he’s just noticing Derek’s in the room. “We need to talk.”

Yeah, they probably do.

As he stands, Mr. Stilinski catches Derek’s eye and gives him a brief, significant look. If he didn’t know better, he might think it was a _take care of him_ look.

The Sheriff probably realizes that Derek’s the only one too, and is trying to boost his confidence.

Stiles bustles him out of the room, more urgently than the situation probably warrants. As soon as he’s dragged Derek a sufficient distance down the hallway, his posture and demeanor completely change. He slouches against the wall, looking up at Derek with a convincingly easy smile.

“So,” he says, “how fast do you think we can get this guy?”

Derek blinks. “I’m sorry?”

Stiles huffs and claps Derek on the arm, like they’re poker buddies or something. “The kidnapper,” he says, “the guy. How fast do you think we can find him?”

“Why are we looking for him?” The Sheriff was pretty clear-- there’s not really anything that they can do to help. It was just a stupid kid who got his hands on a gun and was worried about the local cop catching him out on robbery charges. He was goaded on by his friends and made a stupid choice. Apparently, the whole thing was over in less than an hour.

“You can use your wolfy-senses right? Was his smell on my dad? I think--”

“Stiles.”

“It could be fun,” Stiles says, still smiling, and that’s the dumbest thing Derek thinks he’s ever heard him say. Stiles hasn't had his usual cup of crappy hospital coffee yet, and they should probably get some food, but he looks more worn out, more spread thin and manic, than even that warrants. “We could go after him, be like beat cops. It’d be just like old times.”

“Stiles.”

“No, come on, Der! Where’s your sense of adventure? We haven’t had any action here in years. Yeah, no one’s died in a long time, right? No one’s gotten injured or possessed or thrown a wrench at a car or anything. Hell, it’s been raining all this time and we haven’t even had a dramatic in-the-rain confrontation.”

“Your dad is fine. He’s being discharged tonight--”

Stiles’s smile turns razor sharp. “You knew,” he says.

Lead drops in Derek’s stomach.

“You knew— Jenna called you first!” Stiles is pointing a finger at his chest, but Derek’s already stopped noticing. “Why didn’t you tell me they called? It’s my dad, Derek.”

“I know.”

Derek breathes evenly, or tries to. He’s tilted all of the sudden. The world is slowed down, definitely, or has time actually stopped? He’s got the vague sense that he’s moving through water. There’s definitely enough noise in his ears-- and he can’t smell anything, why can’t he smell anything?

“You told me that it was probably nothing! Occam’s razor, right? But my dad’s in the hospital, Derek. With bruises and a sprain, sure, but he could’ve been shot. That’s not nothing.”

“I’m sorry.”

It shouldn’t be so disconcerting; this feeling is old, but it’s familiar. Like settling on a sweater you haven’t worn since the previous winter. Itches until you get used to it.

Stiles seems to deflate. “Fuck.” He steps back, swiping a hand through his hair. “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, Stiles.”

“So what are we going to do?”

It takes Derek’s brain a shockingly long time to click the words into place, and even then he doesn’t understand them. “Do? About what?”

“About my dad,” Stiles enunciates, like he’s used to having to explain obvious shit to Derek. “We have to find the guy, right? We have to make sure this was-“

This time Derek clicks in. “Not supernatural.”

Stiles nods. He looks so, so tired. Or is it Derek who’s tired? “Yeah.”

“Your dad said—“

“I know what my dad said!” Every eye in the hallway turns to them. Stiles doesn’t seem fazed. “Everyone thinks I’m paranoid, but I was right, wasn’t I?”

That’s the crux of it, isn’t it? It’s not the first time that something like this has happened, not by far, though it is the first in a long time. More importantly, it’s the first time in years that Stiles’s hypervigilance has turned out to be founded.

Derek knows this game. He knows how it feels when something that you feel to be true in your bones proves true. When that little spark that’s always been there-- the hope that maybe you are just making it up like everyone says, maybe you are just hard on yourself or superstitious or traumatized to the point of illusion—when that finally gets put out by reality.

He wouldn’t wish that feeling on anyone. Especially not Stiles, who’s been given far too much suffering and far too many reasons to doubt his own mind already.

“I’m tired of feeling like this,” Stiles continues. “Jennifer friggen Blake shut me out of the room where she took my father with a desk, Derek. A fucking desk, blocking a door, and I couldn’t get to him. Do you know how that felt? And that was just the start of it.”

Ouch. He tries to ignore the sharp pain at the fact that Jennifer was his fault too, and swallows it all down. He needs to shake off this fog. He can’t be this exhausted. He’s not allowed to be right now. Stiles needs him to be focused.

“And the sacrifices,” Stiles adds, “I was the only one who saw that they were sacrifices. I’m not an idiot, Derek, this is probably nothing, but what if it’s not? We have to find him. He can’t just be out there, existing free. I won’t live like that again, I won’t.”

Derek wants to say _we haven’t lived like that in years._

Derek wants to say _you can’t keep looking for danger everywhere you go._

Derek wants to say _I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you she called, I’m sorry that I never tell you anything._

But he’s tired. He’s tired, and he can still smell fire, and Stiles is lit with his own fire, blazing away his self-preservation and patience and fraying his grasp on the new, safer reality of present-day Beacon Hills.

They’re eight years younger again suddenly, finding his dad in the root cellar where Derek murdered his first love. And that kind of throwback, that kind of pain that's been etched into both of their histories, can't be escaped or denied.

So Derek agrees.

They’ll look, just to be sure. They’ll check, and then they’ll go home.

It’ll be easy compared to what they’re used to. It's just a stupid human kid, right?

\---

Except that they don’t find the guy.

They get another call, after four hours of searching. He’s crossed the border. The local police are going to pass the information on to the next county, but they’re off the case now, despite its high profile. It’s not a priority.

Stiles reacts immediately.

He curses and yells into the phone, demanding answers, but the police won’t tell them which border he crossed, or what else they know.

It’s over.

For Stiles, it’s not.

Derek manages to get him home through sheer force of will and werewolf strength (Stiles is too angry and out of it to fight much), but as soon as they arrive in the driveway, that’s where the control snaps.

Stiles loses it. Completely.

He learned some tricks from high school, and the FBI training, and whatever he got up to in the years they both lost touch. He knows how to fight. He knows how to destroy.

He’s ruthless.

If Derek won’t let him destroy his life, then he’ll take Derek down too.

It takes three hours for Derek to finally get him into a hold, and another hour for him to settle.

It occurs to Derek in the midst of it that it should remind him of that night so many years ago. With Boyd and Cora. But the truth is, while he remembers the details of that night with absolute clarity, he can’t remember the emotion. He’s lost the impression of how it felt, like sand wearing down the sharp edges of rock, though he understands that there must have been pain, and fear, and guilt.

Tonight is much the same, he guesses. The result is at least.

When he’s sure that Stiles has finally fallen asleep, Derek waits another 15 minutes, checks on Isaac’s heartbeat, then lets himself pass out.

 

\--

That night, Derek dreams that he’s gone feral.

In the dream, he’s full wolf, but not a were. Not like he is in full shift. He’s wilder, fiercer, all teeth and snarling and an awful hunger that tears at his insides like poison.

His wolf is searching. It’s searching for food, for a cure, for something to make the pain stop.

What it finds is Stiles.

When he rears up to attack, to bite and claw and tear Stiles to shreds under his fingertips, Stiles stops him with a gun. He raises it, slots it through the fur on Derek’s forehead, and Derek hears the noise even before the trigger is pulled.

It sounds like howling.

Stiles shoots, and everything goes dark.

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My [tumblr](http://www.wewalkadifferentpath.tumblr.com)
> 
> Stiles actually made a [bug alignment chart](http://wewalkadifferentpath.tumblr.com/bugalignmentchart) for this very purpose, if you're curious (chaotic evil isn't a strong enough designation for those centipede fuckers). If looking at pictures of bugs seriously creeps you out I wouldn't follow the link though:  
>    
> Purple carnation:  
> 


	4. (Stinging) Nettle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm keeping with the shorter chapters because it's easier to edit, a little less Heavy, and because letsbehonest, none of y'all seem to be reading this far anyways? Honestly, I write for myself, and there are a fair amount of private bookmarks and subscriptions on this, but the least amount of kudos or comments I've EVER had, even on one-shots. Let me know what y'all are thinking please because I don't love shouting into the void! 
> 
> Pictures of stinging nettles at the bottom. No new warnings really, if you've gotten this far, though the somewhat depressing trend continues for a little while longer :)

Peter and Malia were the second and third people to leave After Everything ended. 

They left on a Saturday and a Monday, respectively, and thankfully totally unrelatedly. Stiles was sad to see Malia go. But people were escaping, time was moving on, it was a good thing. 

The fourth person-- Lydia-- left on a Sunday. That one was harder. 

Stiles is pretty sure he moped about it for a few days after she left, even though he was royally proud of her for getting into all of the universities of her choice (as if there was ever any doubt). He still keeps in touch with her, less and less frequently as time passes; he figures that’s just a normal part of growing up. A normal part of escaping their deeply troubled, traumatizing and tumulteous teenagehoods (Lydia was Not As Impressed with his alliteration). He misses her something fierce, but it’s okay. 

The fifth person would be Derek. A Friday. But Stiles is pretty sure that Derek’s never _actually left_ Beacon Hills, for all the times that he’s tried. 

Stiles, when his time came, was marginally more successful at the leaving part, but there’s some part of him that wonders-- 

Well. There’s some part of him that wonders if he ever actually came back. 

 

\- -

 

Stiles wakes up in the greenroom, surrounded by devastation.

It sinks in slowly at first, and then all at once—isn’t that what people say falling in love is supposed to feel like? This is a different type of falling.

It’s bright in there, so it’s daytime, mid-afternoon if the sun is anything to go by. He wades to consciousness slowly in a way that’s rare for him anymore, at least when he’s waking up from actual sleep. On limb moves, then another. It’s like being paralyzed by the kanima venom all over again and if that thought isn't horrifying enough to kick start Stiles’s brain and have him flail his limbs a little wildly just to make sure he can, then he doesn’t know what is.

Though. What he _sees_ is definitely, definitely worse.

The greenroom is destroyed.

Not, minimal, a kid-came-in-with-a-backpack-and-knocked-some-stuff-off-the-shelves destruction, either. Brutal destruction; it’s almost unrecognizable, if Stiles didn’t know this building like a part of his own soul.

And because he knows it like part of his own soul, he also knows immediately that this was his fault.

At first he thinks he’s dreaming again; a thought further reinforced when he sees the corner of Derek’s knee peeking out between some previously-hanging baskets on the floor, but a quick (three) finger count(s) tells him that it’s real, or at least as real as anything ever is.

He feels his heart jackhammer in his chest. It’s almost painful, the intensity with which it’s banging on his ribcage, but somehow whatever it’s feeling hasn’t quite reached his brain yet because he’s not worried. He’s not anything. Calm, there’s a good word. Always stay calm in emergencies, it’s the best way to ensure the best result.

Not that this is an emergency.

But, Derek is lying on the floor, so. Maybe he should just check.

Once he gets his limbs on board, Stiles wades his way through the invisible jello leading him down and scooches, child-like, over to Derek’s prone form. He has to see his face, check his pulse, see his chest rise and fall. ABC’s. It’s first aid 101.

Derek’s lying on his side, curled over like a startled pill bug. He seems to have cleared out a patch in the destruction—deliberately, possibly, or maybe by already having occupied that space when it started raining down, though it seems like the former—and that’s where he’s formed his body like a jenga piece. Maybe he didn’t even move anything, just fit himself into the emptiest space on the ground and arranged his limbs accordingly. That seems like something that Derek would do.

He’s breathing. It’s steady, if a little shallow.

There’s blood on Derek's jeans. It’s impossible to tell if it’s his or not, since he’d already be healed.

Stiles looks down at his own pants. Oh, there’s blood there too. Not much, but a little around the knees, like when he used to fall down in the playground in elementary school. (It used to happen so often that eventually he stopped crying afterward, and the teachers stopped coming over to check on him. It was just Stiles, and he was fine).

Is he fine now? It seems like it. A little more blood on his left sleeve-- and when did he put on a plaid button-up shirt anyways?-- but that’s it. Derek’s got some more blood on his hands, travelling up—or from—his wrists and forearms like vines, and it seems like poetic irony that Derek has literal blood on his hands again, after all this time. He’d probably find the tangible evidence of it soothing, the weirdo.

There’s a noise at the screen door and Stiles turns, once again feeling too slow. It’s only a butterfly, though; it seems to want in, which if you ask Stiles is kind of a bad choice because this place is a mess, but whatever. He crosses the room opens the door anyways, and the little guy flies inside, apparently sated.

The noise wakes Derek. He doesn’t say anything, but his breathing changes, and Stiles knows that Derek is quietly observing him.

“What happened?” Stiles asks. It’s stupid, though, because what he’d meant to say is _I did this._

Stiles is still facing the door so he can’t see, but he imagines that Derek is probably scrunching up his face, wiping a hand down his chin like he does in the mornings, like he has to wake up his face separately from the rest of him.

Derek doesn’t answer.

“I did this.” There we go. Thanks, mouth.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Stiles.”

Yeah, it was a stupid question. He knows why.

Something’s wrong, though. There’s a needling in his stomach, like he’s missing something here. Like something’s trying to get his attention, or warn him, or tell him something. 

Like he’s being watched.

By hundreds of tiny, accusing, disappointed plant eyes.

Stiles just has time to open the door again before he pukes, all over his shoes.

 

\--

 

Derek is cautious with Stiles for the rest of the day.

It’s not like it’s hard, though; Stiles barely moves, and he’s halfway to catatonic. He lies on the living room couch, and though the TV is on in the background he never seems to be watching it, just lying on his back and staring at the ceiling with an expression of general disinterest.

It would be eerie, if Derek hadn’t seen it before.

He brings Stiles sustenance throughout the day: soup broth, water, a raisin scone at one point that Stiles doesn’t eat. The crackers he eats though, almost a whole sleeve, and it’s a nervous tick more than a desire to feed himself but it’s something. 

A couple of times Stiles shivers, and Derek brings over another blanket. He’s buried in them now like a little burrito. Though Stiles is anything but little, his long limbs poking out from underneath the blankets, and Derek keeps having to re-layer them to cover all of his extremities.

Once he’s satisfied that Stiles is parked on the couch, around 5pm, Derek goes to check on Isaac.

He knocks, even though he doesn’t have to. After a minute, Isaac’s voice comes through the open door.

“Come in.”

“How is he?” Isaac asks, as soon as Derek steps in. Isaac’s sitting on his bed— in Stiles’s old office, which is still weird—with his legs crossed. It looks like he’s been using his phone, to read or play games or maybe text someone to come get him out of here, but he puts it down when he sees Derek.

He’s… he’s Stiles.” He doesn’t know what he means by that, but Isaac nods like it makes perfect sense.

“Can he hear us?”

That almost makes Derek smile. “No. He’s not—he doesn’t have the abilities were’s have.”

“Just his own thing,” Isaac says, with a little flail of his hands that’s probably meant to indicate magic.

“It’s mostly just the plants,” Derek tells him, like he actually knows anything.

Isaac bites his lip and picks at one of his soft grey socks absently. The blinds are closed in here, which comes off as odd to Derek for some reason that he can’t place, and the overhead light really needs a bulb change because it’s too harsh for their eyes. It makes him squint.

“Do you—do you want me to bring you anything? Up here?” It seems unspoken that Isaac won’t be coming downstairs today.

Isaac shakes his head. “I’m fine. I’ve got my glass for tap water in the bathroom, and I brought enough snacks up for the day. And I’ve got my laptop and my chargers and a couple of books, so. I’m good.”

He lists it all like a practiced inventory, and it hits Derek in the diaphragm that this is probably something that Isaac is used to. Hiding away in his room, waiting out literal and emotional storms. He hates that they’re making him do it again.

But there’s really nothing he can say, so he doesn’t. Isaac doesn’t want his platitudes, or his touch, or his scent on him. Not anymore.

So. “Just let me know. If there is anything,” Derek says, awkwardly, and gestures to the floor below him to indicate that he’ll be down there, to hear if Isaac talks aloud. The guest room isn’t soundproofed yet.

Isaac forces a little smile.

“Sure.”

Derek lets himself out.

He veers to the bathroom next, to shower. He’d washed the blood off of his hands when they came inside, so as to not get it on any of the blankets or food, but he’s still got some on his arms and his knees from where Stiles had scratched at him. He washes those spots first and then lingers in the hot water, rubbing soap over himself mindlessly until his skin starts to burn a little.

Werewolf healing will take care of the burning, just as it took care the scratches, but still. It’s probably been long enough.

When he comes down, Stiles has sat himself up on the couch and is picking the raisins out of the scone. He looks up as Derek walks in in his towel. He doesn’t smirk, like he usually would, or comment on Derek’s abs or make a pun about him being wet. He just looks.

“Who’s blood was it?” Stiles asks. His voice is croaky from disuse but not as bad as it could have been, so he must’ve been drinking the water. Derek had wondered.

He debates lying, but in the end settles on the truth. “Mostly mine.”

Stiles nods slowly, like he expected the answer. “I’m sorry.”

Derek bites the inside of his cheek. “Me too.”

There’s a long pause, and then Stiles sighs. “I can’t believe it’s still happening,” he breathes, to his hands, quietly enough that a human wouldn’t be able to hear him. Derek pretends that he doesn’t hear it, even though Stiles will know he did. He doesn’t know what to say.

 

\--

 

That night, Stiles lies still as Derek fucks him, soft but urgent.

Derek still asks for consent until it’s probably unfuriating, still checks in with the stoplight system and gives Stiles plenty of time to safeword, but of course he doesn’t. Stiles had agreed to finish the scone earlier, to drink some tea, and he even took it upon himself to do the test they use on drunk drivers in order to prove to Derek that he was lucid enough to do this.

Still, Derek goes slowly.

He holds Stiles wrists down as he thrusts into him. He thinks of how he held him down last night, how he wrapped Stiles’s body with his own like a human glove and hugged him as he thrashed and swore and threatened, until he finally settled. Derek couldn’t stop him from doing some serious damage first. They’ll both be paying for that, for a while.

Stiles doesn’t climax, neither of them do. But Derek had expected that. This isn’t about attraction or lust or closeness, it’s about retribution. Balance.

Just like last night, Stiles needs someone to keep his body from turning itself into a weapon.

He doesn’t like to let Stiles use him as self-punishment, though, so he stays gentle, even though he can tell that Stiles is frustrated and wants more. He won’t ask for it though. They’re not pretending that this is something else, but they still won’t give words to what it is.

He holds Stiles down, and fucks him, and when they’re spent, he drops himself on top of Stiles and they both pretend to sleep.

 

\--

 

A severe tornado warning comes into town the next day, which is just fucking great.

It means that they’re all stuck inside together. Him, Derek, and a cautious looking Isaac, who’s definitely not subtle about the fact that he hasn’t left his room except to pee since Stiles had his meltdown.

Stiles isn’t mad at Isaac, he’s _not,_ but for the first time he does kind of wish he wasn’t here. Not that it matters; he saw Stiles’s fucked up brain in action enough times back in the day. Still, though. Knowing that both Derek and Isaac can hear him, everywhere in the house except for his bedroom and the bathroom, is kind of driving him up the wall.

So much so, that he finally decides to go look at the backyard.

He hadn’t wanted to, before, coward that he is. He couldn’t face the destruction. As it is, he circumvents having to go through the greenroom too by walking out the front door and around the house, through the gate to the back.

It’s not as bad as he—it’s not as bad as it could have been.

The garden is tense when Stiles walks in. It’s like the air stops moving, like it’s holding its breath. But there isn’t the hatred he expects, or the rejection, just a soft sense of melancholy, which feels worse. 

Most of this part of the garden is unscathed. Bits and pieces of last night are coming back to him in flashes and he remembers making a beeline for the one spot.

His lavender.

They’re completely wrecked where he flattened and attacked them with the shovel (which, he notes, is nowhere to be found; that’s probably thanks to Derek). He remembers the silence; he didn’t scream, or curse, or explain himself as he bashed them to shreds, he just did it.

The whole wolf-proof section is torn to pieces; too, wolfsbane and mountain ash pulled up long before their harvest date and left in a pile. He’s not sure what that was meant to be for or why he tore it up. It wasn’t even a wolf who kidnapped his dad.

There’s a small beetle in his asters, and it’s watching him.

He feels like a murderer.

Then he sees it. The raspberry plants, snapped in half, all of them. Not even clean in half—he’d just snapped their stems and left them hanging, like some sort of creepy skeleton arms. The sky is dark because of the coming storm, and it feels like Halloween, like he’s just walked into a haunted house.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and he doesn’t know what’s wrong with him that he can’t feel it. He can’t make himself feel anything. He did this, he took out his rage on the only thing that’s kept him grounded for the last 4 years-- the only two things, if you include Derek-- and he can’t even feel sorry. It’s pathetic.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats. Maybe if he says it enough it’ll make up for the emptiness. He drops down in the grass, unbothered by the wet stain it’ll leave on his pants, and doesn’t let himself touch the plants.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry._

He doesn’t know how many times he repeats it, but by the time the sky starts to rumble and he retreats inside, it’s dropped about 5 degrees and his fingers have gone numb.

 

\--

 

“You need to tell me about time travel,” Stiles demands, the next day at Deaton’s.

Deaton, predictably, barely even pauses in his cleaning. “You seem very urgent all of the sudden.”

Fucking right, he’s urgent. The tornado warning has been lifted for now, but there are still meant to be storms coming through over the next few days; this is his only guaranteed window for the foreseeable future to have this conversation. He still doesn’t trust Deaton half as far as he could throw him—which is basically no distance at all—and Deaton’s conversation skills are at about a quarter of that. 

If you factor in that Deaton’s willingness to cut through bullshit is another fractional amount of that then, then yeah, you have a recipe for Stiles’s thinning patience.

“Might it have anything to do with the garden you destroyed?” Deaton asks.

It is possible that that is factored in as well.

“How do you know about that?”

It’s easy enough for anyone like Stiles to tell—the flora within a 50 mile radius of the house have reacted to what he did, like a ripple of information transference. If Stiles thought it was dead before, now the forests and fields from his place to the clinic stand silent and solemn like a line of mourners. The air seems to be crackling for the way that everything is watching him, evaluating him, fearing him.

But Deaton’s not supposed to know that. To be honest, Stiles is still not sure what exactly Deaton is or how much he feels, but he’s not like Stiles. If he were, Stiles would have a hell of a lot more answers by now.

“Derek told me this morning.”

“Derek?”

“Yes. He dropped by on his way to the station.”

“Derek _Hale._ ”

“Yes, Stiles. He was concerned about you. He wanted to let me know that you might be… sensitive, for the next few lessons.”

Stiles scoffs. “You mean volatile.”

“I mean sensitive. It’s a tricky thing, what happened to you.”

What happened to him. As if it were something passive, out of his control. As if it weren’t his body smashing, cutting, lashing out. Destroying.

“I need you to teach me about time travel, Deaton.”

“That won’t remedy your concerns.” Deaton finally drops the sponge, flipping the dog cage over with a satisfying thunk that echoes in the small space. “It won’t help you.”

Stiles licks his lips and steps toward Deaton, unwittingly starting to pace with agitation. “Okay, look, I know that you said that it’ll take years for me to learn and could be dangerous and everything, but you don’t understand. I’m willing to risk that. I’m willing to take the time. I have to learn this.”

Deaton observes the pacing and wringing hands with his usual cool objectivity (Stiles is always pretty sure there’s some judgment there, too, but he’ll take that over fake stoicism). “It isn’t what you think.”

“Okay,” Stiles bargains. “Okay, what if I do something for you? Something more than what you usually pay me for-- I don’t mean it like that, jesus! I could just, like, take care of your runes, or make you medicines, or grow something for you, or-“

“Stiles.”

“No, you don’t understand!” Stiles yells, immediately flinching back at the loudness of his own voice. “You don’t understand,” he tries again, quieter. “What if the next time I get like that I kill something, hm? Something that can’t regrow. What if I kill some _one?_ ”

Deaton’s eyes darken. “You won’t.” He grabs the sponge again and tosses it to Stiles, gesturing at another cage. Stiles sort of wants to smack him with it, but he’s also grateful for something to do with his hands, so he reluctantly complies.

“Besides,” Deaton adds, “as I said, there’s no such thing as strict time travel. There’s only similar alternatives.”

“Similar alternatives? What kind of alternatives?”

“Look,” Deaton sighs, “I’ll tell you about it. But you have to promise me one thing.” When Stiles glances at him sideways, Deaton straightens intently. “You have to talk to Derek. He cares about you, Stiles, and he’s concerned for you. Let him in-” he raises a hand to stop Stiles’s attempt at protesting, because there’s no fucking way that he’s involving Derek in his messes, and anyways Stiles is _fine,_ he talks to people, “- or if not him, then let someone else in, at the very least. You’re going to need that now more than ever.”

“What is this, a fucking Hallmark movie?”

“Stiles.”

Stiles stares at the sponge in his hands, already wet and muddy with the residue from the cage. He doesn’t have much other choice. So he nods. 

“Tell me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stinging Nettle
> 
>  
> 
>  


End file.
